Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The literature indicates that physician-oriented marketing effectiveness declines
over the brand's life cycle. As for DTCA, category advertisements may be more
effective when patients are not yet fully educated about the disease treated by a
drug, however, once they are educated, brand advertisements have higher effective-
ness. In countries where pharmacists are required to dispense generic drugs instead
of more expensive brand name equivalents, the brand's pharmaceutical marketing
effectiveness declines when approaching patent expiration.
20.4.4
Brand Level Marketing Efforts and Category Sales
We have seen that pharmaceutical marketing efforts speed up a brand's diffusion
process. In case of a fi rst entrant, when brand sales are equal to category sales, this
means that the marketing efforts help shape category sales. However, what is the
effect on category sales once competition in a category increases? Do the brands'
marketing efforts still lead to an increase in category sales or do they cancel each
other out? Fischer and Albers (
2010
) answer this question by determining the “own”
and competitive effects of detailing, professional journal advertising, and DTCA for
2,831 drugs covering 86 US prescription categories. The analyzed drugs have a
median order of entry of 17 and over three quarters of them can be classifi ed as
generic or me-too drugs, highlighting the competitive environment in which they
operate. Interestingly, Fischer and Albers (
2010
) use brand level analyses to obtain
category level effects and show that all marketing instruments have a positive and
signifi cant effect on category sales where detailing shows the largest effect size.
However, when including competitive effects the total effect sizes decline substan-
tially with the detailing effect no longer signifi cantly different from zero. Potentially,
detailing thus has the largest effect on category sales, however, due to intense com-
petition the individual brands' effects completely cancel each other out.
20.4.5
Conclusion and Modeling Implications
We have described the complex dynamics in the effectiveness of pharmaceutical
marketing instruments. First, we indicated how effectiveness is infl uenced by the
stage of the life cycle at which a brand is launched. In particular, we concluded that
pioneering brands and brands that enter during the growth stage of a category have
signifi cant advantages over later entrants. Second, given a specifi c entry point, mar-
keting effectiveness varies over the brand's life cycle. With regard to physician-
oriented marketing instruments we fi nd that the effectiveness is highest immediately
after introduction. Subsequently effectiveness diminishes to arrive at lower levels in
the brand's mature stage. Some time before patent expiry long-term marketing
effectiveness declines even further in countries where pharmacists are required to
substitute the generic equivalent for the prescribed brand. Category DTCA is most
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