Patient Empowerment: Consequences for Pharmaceutical Marketing and for the Patient–Physician Relationship - Innovation and Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Industry - page 443

14.6.1 Limitations

A first limitation of the current chapter is its strong focus on the effects of patient
empowerment for patient-physician relationships and for pharmaceutical marketing.
I refer the reader to the rich literature on patient empowerment in medicine for the
implications of such empowerment for doctors (see, e.g., Charles et al. 1999 , 2006 ;
Epstein et al. 2004 ; Krahn and Naglie 2008 ). Other stakeholders in the healthcare
value chain include pharmacists and other product intermediaries, hospitals, nurses
and other healthcare professionals, payers (insurers, health maintenance organiza-
tions, and governments), employers, and regulators (see Stremersch and Van Dyck
2009 ). Although indirectly addressed in this chapter, patient empowerment may
bring about unique challenges and questions for each of these stakeholders. Future
research on such challenges is very important.
Second, firms trying to increase the centrality of patients in their marketing
strategies will probably face several barriers that need to be openly addressed in
future research. I expect firms to face three major barriers: resistance from sales and
marketing managers used to steer marketing towards physicians, possible negative
reactions from regulators, physicians, and even patients who are not used to dialogue
with pharmaceutical companies, and initial resistance from shareholders who may
fear that such a move is too costly and outside the current set of competences of
pharmaceutical firms.
The present chapter does not offer all of the answers to these concerns. Yet, it
provides strong evidence suggesting that medical decision-making is quickly chang-
ing. Companies that adapt faster to this new paradigm will develop a strong com-
petitive advantage. In this new paradigm, I expect the patient to become
pharmaceutical firms' best ally in therapy launch and therapy promotion.
Third, my analysis of the degree to which pharmaceutical firms are embracing
patient empowerment as a strategic orientation suffers from some limitations.
My content analysis was based on a relatively short and conservative set of key-
words. A more extensive analysis of firms' strategic orientation towards the patient
could perhaps uncover more nuanced trends. In addition, an analysis based on firms'
annual reports remains focused on what top management decides to publish in those
reports. Information included in an annual report may be particularly sensitive to the
interests of the shareholders, who may react to information differently than do other
agents. If senior management fears that shareholders may react negatively to early
investments in patient-centered marketing strategies, they may be conservative
when stressing such investments in the annual report. Such a behavior could explain
the still relatively low prevalence of patient empowerment-related keywords in the
annual reports I analyzed.
Despite these limitations, I hope my chapter has achieved at least two goals.
First, I hope it has triggered the interest of pharmaceutical marketers in experiment-
ing and developing marketing strategies capable of turning the pharmaceutical firm
into an advocate and ally of the patient. Second, I hope that it stimulates marketing
scholars to go beyond the study of direct-to-physician marketing and DTCA and to