Journal of Medical Marketing: Device,Diagnostic and Pharmaceutical Marketing

This paper looks selectively at strategic group theory and seeks to explore the benefits and limitations of modern strategic group analysis within the context of practical strategy making in the pharmaceutical industry. The rise and fall of strategic group research is reviewed and suggestions advanced as to the reasons why strategic group research suffered criticism and frequently produced conflicting results. The paper concludes that strategic group research offers a valuable way to classify firms by their strategy and provides some suggestions as to how industry strategists may benefit from strategic group analysis and avoid the pitfalls exposed by previous research.

The ‘experience curve’ shows a consistent relationship between the cost (or price) of a product, and the total production volume to that point and is observable for a wide range of products, often over surprisingly long periods of time. Evidence is presented here to indicate that medical devices also follow such curves. The benefits to be gained from wider use of such curves by manufacturers and by health technology assessment organisations, particularly for reimbursement, are presented.

Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies face many challenges in the process of developing a product's brand name. Among the myriad issues surrounding the drug name is regulatory review and approval. Government agencies in both the United States (Food and Drug Administration (FDA)) and Europe (European Medicines Agency (EMEA)) are the final arbiters of what constitutes a ‘safe’ drug name — that is a name that is not likely to cause confusion visually or verbally, which could lead to prescribing error. The regulatory hurdle is high, approximately 36 per cent of names submitted to FDA are not approved and 50 per cent of names submitted to EMEA are similarly turned down. This paper will help pharmaceutical marketers and brand managers prepare for the regulatory review process. The authors provide a summary of each Agency's process, describe the key issues of interest to regulatory bodies, and present a framework for approaching name validation research. They also discuss regulatory submission and the appeals process.

This paper sets out an alternative strategic way to compete to the blockbuster model in the pharmaceutical industry. The alternative is: Category captain management that approaches a customer not as a supplier of physical products but more of a strategic partner. By focusing on what is needed to improve the drug company's customers in the way of performance metrics and patient healthcare behaviours, the drug company can become a valued ally of its downstream customers.

Objective: To assess health professionals' perspectives on a new tablet dispenser, in particular with respect to their perception of patients' needs, dispensing of the device and patient instruction. Methods: Health professionals were invited to participate in an online survey. Respondents entering the survey site received an introduction, an animated presentation of the tablet reminder device and a questionnaire consisting of close-ended questions assessing the device, followed by open-ended questions. Results: The survey was completed by 138 health professionals of whom 34 per cent were general practitioners and 31 per cent specialists or hospital physicians. One-third of respondents consisted of nurses, pharmacists and other health professionals. Approximately 80 per cent of respondents provided very favourable assessments of the device functions with respect to reminder, feedback and protection of tablets. Similar positive assessments were found for the device's usability and design. The majority of respondents perceived the device as a possible useful aid to patients. Between 10 and 20 per cent assessed the device and its functions as less useful. In all respondent groups pharmacies were the preferred channel for supply of devices and instruction of patients. The patterns of answers did not differ significantly between the different professions. Conclusions: This study shows that health professionals assess the tablet reminder device very positively. Since patients have also been shown to have a positive attitude, introduction of the device into clinical practice could facilitate a concordant relationship between patients and health professionals.

The question as how to achieve competitive advantage through a genuine and innovative set of strategic principles and tools is ever present in the business repertoire of all industries. Yet few manage to reorder their way of doing things to achieve the perfect correlation between business goals and external customers' expectations. With modern economics rejecting the existence of a perfect equilibrium between supply and demand, the job of the business strategy planner is harder than never before. The key to successful strategy creation, as this paper shows, lies in an understanding of three strategic perspectives:

The purchaser of health care services — patient and government — as investor in health as an asset.

This paper describes a case study of an advertising campaign that has individual short message service (SMS) interaction concerning a health marketing message as the central element. Decisive factors include the widespread use of SMS, the opportunity for interaction and the independence from time and place. The objective of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of engaging health consumers through SMS campaigns. Advertisements were run for four weeks from 1st January, 2006 to 1st February, 2006 with the message ‘Test yourself to see what kind of a smoker you are and get help to stop smoking’. The test is a modified Fagerstrøm questionnaire. Over a four-week period, 10,565 people participated in the test. The case illustrates that it is most certainly possible to engage consumers and provide individual marketing via SMS mobile telephony.