Kurtenhamer wrote:
Anyone knows about pharma Qs:
1. What do you know about pharma trends? How do they affect marketing strategies of pharma companies?
2. If you are a product manager of a drug X, and it will go "patent-off- in a next few years? What will you do?
3. The magazine A posed :" In the next 2 months, drug A will be launched into the market. This drug has few dozens and price is less than our drug? What will you do?
Thanks. --K
1. Pharma marketing trends at the moment are to cut costs like mad. Pfizer has led the pack in scaling back marketing spend and reduce the size of its sales forces. Many other big players have followed suit. The cuts are part of broad restructuring programs happening in the pharma industry, with plenty of layoffs planned. It appears marketing/sales have taken the brunt of this, probably because of the huge future genericizations that are coming in the next few years (meaning fewer branded drugs for the reps to promote) and because of a general dearth of the internal pipelines at big pharma.
2. What to do depends on a number of factors. Are life cycle extension strategies nearing maturity (such as generational improvements to the product that could secure additional patent coverage)? Do we know if generic companies have filed or are planning to file aNDAs? Am I working for one of the pharma companies that will negotiate with generic firms and buyout their future revenues on a competing generic product? If that answer to all of these is "no", then I'd starting looking for a new job!
3. I don't know what you mean by "has few dozens". But on the pricing side, it depends on the relative efficacy/safety profiles of the drugs, exactly which patients each drug is useful for, who pays for the drug (CMS, insurance, private pay) and their attitudes towards cost-containment in this therapeutic area.