Digital strategies in marketing to the physician

Leonard Lerer and Mike Piper

Chapter Chapter 9 in Digital Strategies in the Pharmaceutical Industry, 2003, pp 101-130 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The personal contact between a pharmaceutical company and physicians, epitomized in the sales representative visit to a doctor’s office, is the gold standard against which all marketing interventions in this sector are judged. However, pharmaceutical companies are now caught in a vicious cycle, as they employ an ever-increasing number of sales representatives for the same pool of target physicians. A few years ago, 2000 sales representatives in the US affiliate was considered a reasonable target. Now, the major pharmaceutical companies employ 5000 or more, and are spending more than twice the amount on sales, marketing and administration as they spend on R&D [22]. US sales forces nearly doubled in size between 1996 and 2001, but the number of detailing visits to physicians rose by only 15 per cent, as doctors succumbed to ‘salesperson fatigue’ [95]. The competitive environment demands that pharmaceutical companies continue the sales force arms race in the absence of viable alternatives.

Keywords: Pharmaceutical Company; Customer Relationship Management; Enterprise Resource Planning; Sales Force; Sales Representative (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-59879-9_9

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230598799_9

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