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Pahrma Voice

Four E's for pharma marketing strategies success

Md Shah Alam Javid, Communications Manager, MakroCare Clinical Research on what ails pharma marketing strategies In present scenario, the Indian pharmaceutical industry is riding high on exports led growth. Brand acquisition, mergers, joint ventures and alliances and increased focused on the generic and specialty segments are some of the other current moves. While they are in the domestic market and on the R&D front, industry is faced with mixed fortunes. The Indian pharma industry came into existence in 1901 and the next few decades saw the pharma industry moving through several phases, largely in accordance with government policies. Currently, there are more than 3,000 registered and 24,000 licensed pharma companies in India. Of the 465 bulk drugs used in India, approximately 425 are manufactured here. India has more drug-manufacturing facilities that have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) than any country other than the US. Indian pharma industry is poised for high consistent growth over the next few years, driven by a multitude of factors. Few top Indian companies including Ranbaxy Laboratories, Dr Reddys Laboratories (DRL), Cipla and Dabur have already established their presence. The pharma industry is a knowledge driven industry and is heavily dependent on R&D for new products and growth. However, basic research (discovering new molecules) is a time consuming and expensive process and is thus, dominated by large global multinationals. Market drivers Pharma market is expanding - price levels are rising. This coupled with increased personal spending, fuelled by economic growth and greater access to medical care is helping the market expand. Current scenario in the domestic industry indicates that there is a huge untapped potential. However, the industry needs to address some performance related issues in the domestic markets. While many pharma companies have successfully deployed a plethora of strategies to target the various customer types, recent business and customer trends are creating new challenges and opportunities for increasing profitability. Use of medical representatives for marketing products to physicians and to exert some influence over others in the hierarchy of decision makers has been a time-tested tradition. Strategic shortfalls

Despite this, the industry is still plagued with some very serious strategic and operational level issues such as increased competition, low level of customer knowledge (doctors, retailers, wholesalers), good product mix and excellent marketing strategies but poor customer acquisition, very high attrition rate of the sales personnel, very high territory development costs, the number and the quality of medical representatives, busy physicians giving less time for sales calls, virtually no mechanism of sales forecasting from field sales level, leading to huge deviations, absence of analysis on the amount of time invested on profitable and not-so-profitable customers and lack of time-share planning towards developing customer base for future markets etc. etc., For marketing pharma products companies require more field force to remind their their direct customer (doctor) of their products on a daily basis. Moreover field force should have good knowledge of product schemes/offers and good rapport with retailers. Field force also ensures availability of their products to convince doctors and PUSH their products. The four Es At strategic level, an organisation's knowledge of their customers is an acknowledged key asset. At operational level, industry needs to evaluate and measure the four E's of performance to witness dramatic results from the sales and marketing processes: efficiency, effectiveness, empowerment and enhanced accountability. In this system, doctors and retailers are the core customers and the major thrust is given to build and retain these customers. Here retailers are also core customer as most of the times they are substituting the products based on their own discretion. For retaining and developing customers, the companies normally provide utility gifts to remind the products on daily basis. There can be various ways through which a business organisation can achieve success in the market, but if all those ways can be addressed as above, then it can be rightly said that the triangular linkages or the relationship between these three parties (company, customers and competitors) determine the success and failure of pharma marketing strategies.