Pharmaceutical marketing, every day different companies bringing different brands with continuously increasing the size of market. In this
competition medical practitioner and physicians are the key customers for this industry. Physicians are actually the ultimate decision holder of which brand should be prescribed to their patients. Therefore, all the marketing strategies are being focused towards them. Marketing strategies are revolving around product, price and promotions and Companies are making marketing tools to draw the attention of physicians for prescribing the brands.
Pharmaceutical marketing is a specialized field where medical representatives form its skeleton. In 2000, drug companies spent more than 15.7 billion dollars on promoting prescription drugs in the United States. Medical representatives aim to influence prescription pattern of doctors in favor of their brands. Medical representatives (“medreps” or “drug reps” or “reps”) act by arranging appointments with prescribers, pharmacists and other hospital medical teams.
Drug reps increase drug sales by influencing physicians, and they do so with finely titrated doses of friendship. They sometimes deliver lectures in medical work places or at a hotel or conference venue.
Physicians are under more intense financial pressure than ever to prescribe pharmaceutical manufacturers’ expensive new drugs even when cheaper, more established drugs may be at least as effective. Coupled with psychological or social pressure that may distort a doctor’s judgment, the influence of free gifts and subtle economic incentives may have financial costs, according to several recent studies on the interactions between doctors and drug company representatives.
The increased financial pressure was verified earlier this year in a survey of almost 3,200 American physicians in six specialties published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The study showed that drug companies’ influence is more ubiquitous than previous studies had found. Almost all (94%) of the family practitioners, internists, pediatricians, cardiologists, general surgeons, and anesthesiologists surveyed said they accepted drug company money or gifts. Of those, 83% accepted free food, and 78% accepted free drugs. More than one-third (35%) accepted reimbursements for the cost of conferences or CME, and 28% took money for consulting, giving speeches to persuade other doctors to use companies’ drugs, or steering their patients into companies’ clinical trials.
