Marketing strategies for development of Painless Injection: - “An

Indian market Perspective”

The Third National Conference on Rising India in new Global Order

Successful new product strategies require integrated approach to the business of

drug development. Those that really focus on commercialization understand the
importance of developing a product profile and place this at the core of their overall
development. This will optimize product potential and set the precedence for future
new product successes.
Greater emphasis will need to be placed on when and how each phase of a product's
lifecycle is managed in order to maximize return on investment. This paper
describes each of the lifecycle management strategies currently practiced, when and
how they might be used, and provides selected implementation.

Pharmaceutical companies drive commercially focused drug development to

create blockbuster megabrands. Benefits of commercially focused drug development
include increased sales, increased speed to market penetration, improved product
positioning and market acceptance, and greater marketing impact through market
assessment and preparation activities, product life cycle.

Companies are also starting to adapt their product development processes to the
new environment. For years, firms have made their ways into the global market by
researching generic competitors to patented drugs and following up with litigation to
challenge the patent. This approach remains untouched by the new patent regime and
looks to increase in the future. However, those that can afford it have set their sights on
an even higher goal: new molecule discovery. Although the initial investment is huge,
companies are lured by the promise of hefty profit margins and the recognition as a
legitimate competitor in the global industry. Local firms have slowly been investing more
money into their R&D programs or have formed alliances to tap into these opportunities.

An effective new product development strategy must go beyond efforts to achieve

core market growth. A robust strategy must consider all possibilities and generate growth
and revenue along several potential avenues of innovation.

When it comes to formulating a new product development strategy, there are four
potential avenues of innovation: (1) core market growth, which consists of making
improvements to products and services that already exist in order to help customers get a
job done better, (2) adjacent or related market growth, which is improving existing
products and services to help customers get related or ancillary jobs done (for example,
by adding a tongue cleaner to a tooth brush), (3) new market creation, which involves
creating a new product or service for customers who are trying to get a job done but
cannot because no solutions or only ad hoc solutions exist, and (4) disruption, which is
defined as the creation of a technology that enables a new set of customers to perform a
job that only specialists could previously perform. Crest White stripes, for example, made
it possible for people to whiten their teeth on their own, eliminating the specialist – the
dentist.

While core market growth is nearly always an important part of the new product
development strategy, most companies hesitate to pursue the other three avenues of
growth – even though they may offer higher returns. A success in the area of new market
creation, for example, is said to deliver ten times more profit that a success in that core
market.

While many pharmaceutical 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. In the
Pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, a complex web of decision-makers determines
The nature of the transaction (prescription) for which direct customer of Pharma industry
(Doctor) is responsible. Essentially, the end-user (patient) consumes a product and pays
the cost. 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
traditin. Typically, sales force expense comprises an estimated 15 percent to 20 percent
of annual product revenues, the largest line item on the balance sheet. Despite this other
expense, the industry is still plagued with some very serious strategic and operational
level issues.

The Product Development stage begins when the company finds and develops a
new-product idea. This involves translating trends in the macro environment, taking
diverse pieces of information, and incorporating them into a product concept.

Product concepts typically undergo several iterations, involving considerable time

and money, before they are exposed to target consumers via test markets. Concepts that
survive test market scrutiny are ready for market introduction. "Time to market," or the
amount of development time necessary to move from product concept to finished
product, can be critical, especially when competitors are working on similar products.
Forward-thinking marketing managers are using interactive concept testing via the
Internet to obtain faster feedback from target customers and to shorten their product
development timetables.

During the product development stage, sales are zero and profits are negative (i.e.
anticipated future profits are being invested in product development).

In the Market Introduction stage, sales are low as a new idea is first introduced
to a market. Customers aren't looking for the product, and may not be aware of its
benefits or advantages over current offerings. In fact, they may not even know about it. 
Informative promotion is needed to tell potential customers about the new product
concept.
 Even though a firm promotes its new product, it takes time for customers to learn
that the product is available. Money is invested in developing the market in anticipation
of future profits.
In the Market Growth stage, industry sales grow quickly -- but industry profits
rise and then start falling.  The innovator begins to make big profits as more and more
customers buy.  But competitors see the opportunity and enter the market.  Some just
copy the most successful product, or try to improve it to compete better. Others try to
refine their offerings to do a better job of appealing to some target markets. The new
entries result in much product variety.
This is the stage where industry profits are largest, but it is also when industry
profits begin to decline as increased competition creates downward pressure on prices.
Market Maturity occurs when industry sales level off. Competition gets tougher
as aggressive competitors have entered the race for profits. Industry profits continue to go
down during maturity because promotion costs rise and competitors continue to cut prices
to attract more business.

A well balanced new product development strategy often allocates resources as

follows:
 65% core market growth
 15% adjacent or related market growth
 15% new market creation
 5% disruption

To implement such a new product development strategy means that a company

must hire and train people to be responsible for areas of growth outside the core market.
Addressing this issue is a stumbling block in many firms.
Once a company has defined its new product development strategy, it commences the
innovation process – which is the process of devising solutions that address the
customer's unmet needs in the areas chosen for pursuit. The outcome-driven innovation
methodology enables companies to successfully execute all four of these new product
development strategies. In each of these contexts, the organization is trying to devise a
solution that addresses the customer’s unmet needs. The outcome-driven methodology is
designed to uncover the unmet needs and address them, regardless of context.
Once a concept has been defined and approved by management the concept enters the
product development process – the process by which the concept gets transformed into
product specifications, designed, tested and ultimately released into manufacturing. 

Some of the key marketing strategies for development of painless injection

 Patient empowerment
 Prescription-products promotion
 Individual research
 Peer influence
 Key opinion leader Colleagues
 Physician targeting
 Opinion Leader Influence mapping
 Sales force size and structure

The findings of the paper will from organizational perspective in new product
development are enlisted below:
 Increased competition and shortened window of opportunity.
 Low level of customer knowledge (Doctors, Retailers, Wholesalers).
 Poor customer acquisition, development and retention strategies.
 Varying customer perception.
 The number and the quality of medical representatives
 Very high territory development costs.
 High training and re-training costs of sales personnel.
 Very high attrition rate of the sales personnel.
 Busy doctors giving less time for sales calls.
 Poor territory knowledge in terms of business value at medical representative
level.
 Unclear value of prescription from each doctor in the list of each sales person.
  Unknown value of revenue from each retailer in the territory
 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
 Manual and cumbersome administrative systems and processes designed which
don't facilitate optimal efficiency levels in sales teams

References:
http://www.pharmafocusasia.com/strategy/pharmaceutical_marketing_asia.htm
http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/wirtschaft_finanzen/bericht-103324.html
http://www.marketresearch.com/product/display.asp?productid
http://www.salesandmarketingnetwork.com/reports.php?ID=2259
http://www.ngpharma.eu.com/currentissue/article.asp?art=271729&issue=224