Big Pharma's Marketing Tactics

Your Name: Javeria Awan
My Name: Professor Preston Cameron
Class Number & Name: SBU200 27702, Business and Society
Date: October 27, 2014
Case Analysis – Case # and Case Title: Big Pharma’s Marketing Tactics
Contents

Introduction: 1
Issues faced by Big Pharma: 1
My Analysis: 2
The stake holders: 2
Consumers: 2
Community: 2
Government: 2
Doctors and Medical Students: 2
My perspective: 2
My recommendations: 3
Conclusion: 3
References: 3

Introduction:
The Big Pharma or Pharmaceutical industry is the most important and profitable industry overall. There are many big players in the industry which are running the industry as they want. Because, there are so many big people involved in the industry, it is often called “Big Pharma”. Approximately,
526 lobbyists are there to protect the industry. They have also engaged doctors to market unapproved drugs and make more customers.
Issues faced by Big Pharma:
There are many different issue discussed in this case.
One of the main issues is that Big Pharma is doing illegal and unethical market. For example: Pfizer did illegal marketing of Neurontin Drug. Moreover, they are doing Salesmanship over Science. They are marketing their drug and not focusing on research. They are also marketing drugs which actually have not been approved by FDA. These problems and issue tells about the integrity and ethical standards of big Pharma.
The Big Pharma also has been charged of involving themselves in unethical business practices. They also sign up medical students even before they were graduated. They were giving them gifts and making them loyal to their companies. It was not a proper system of recruitment. Moreover, they were giving lavish trips, gifts and other benefits to doctors so that they could market their products. Doctors were also being used and their integrity with their patients has been not right. They were giving special treatment to those drugs and were prescribing the drug to their patients.
My Analysis:
The stake
holders:
Consumers:
They are the people who have been directly affected by the illegal marketing practices. For example: in the case, it is written that Lamisil tablet killed people, although it was not killer disease but that tablet killed people. Consumers have been really strong to raise their voices. But on the other hand, Big Pharma is the companies which do research and have product knowledge. Consumers have to compromise.
Community:
As the Pharmaceutical industry is growing very fast, concerns are also increasing. People are also taking interest and have stakes. People believed that Big Pharma is not trustworthy.
Government:
Government and FDA have an important role in Big Pharma because they are regulators. Moreover, without the consent of FDA, companies cannot market their drug. Government also often intervenes into matters of companies. It is accountability and obligation of the government that they should put standard on the pharmaceutical companies. People have a right to have healthy environment. Government also gets a lot of taxes from the companies. They can many things to make it strict.
Doctors and Medical Students:
These are the people who are getting gifts and expensive trips. They are prescribing the drug. They are also marketing the unapproved drug. Their stake is that they want to make their good career and get good salary. Also, they are also given good salary when they could maintain a good standard.
If medicines are expensive, many people could not afford to buy it because they have low income and ultimately, companies will have low number of customers. All the pharmaceutical companies, research centers and stockholders wants to have more and more profits and have gains from their investments. But companies are compromising on their honesty and ethical standards of the business. It is also declining the performance of the companies.
My perspective:
First of all, this case study is telling about the questionable marketing tactics of Big Pharma.
The company, Pfizer Company is advertising Neurontin Drug and doing off-label marketing of this painkiller. I think company should not use this inequitable and questionable marketing tactics. It should follow standard marketing strategies and could engage doctors and other medical people through hospitals and clinics. Also, it is also the responsibility of the doctors not to prescribe the drug they are not sure of. The companies could not just ask the doctors to prescribe. Moreover, they are educated people and know what is right and what is wrong.
In Big Pharma, they are going for Direct To Customers (DTC) marketing to sell their drug and get profit. Companies are doing salesmanship over science. They have put top priority on gains and not thinking about the patients. The companies are also doing aggressive promotion for their newer drugs. Ultimately, consumers perceive that the newer drug are far better than old ones and can help them to cure the several diseases.

My
recommendations:
Firstly, I would like to mention the concept of CSR. I have learnt that CSR gives a competitive edge to companies so that they could prosper fast. But on one hand, companies do whatever they want to do and on the other hand, they do CSR and get rid of everything. This seems that they can do what they want to and by doing CSR, they would have good image in the market.
There are many laws and regulations but they are needed to be implemented. There are also set standards so FDA should be stricter in this. Government also should focus to make an organization which put standard on the marketing tactics of the companies who are using human psychology to sell their products. Moreover, there should be public awareness so that more and more people should understand the marketing tactics. Doctors should also understand about self-centered companies who just want profits. There must be control mechanism and put them in implementation to make certain that customers are not browbeaten. There must be severe punishments to those companies who do questionable marketing. There must be cancellation of licenses and it must be enforced who do unethical marketing.

Conclusion:
To conclude, I would like to include news which I found when I was learning about this case. It says that pharmaceutical companies had vaccine for Ebola but it did not market it because they want Ebola to spread out. After that, they will give vaccine to people. They wanted to have more profit. This should not be done by these companies.
I believe that Pharma companies need to change their strategies. Money cannot be everything!
References:
http://www.naturalnews.com/047395_Ebola_vaccine_Big_Pharma_profiteering.html
http://onlineathens.com/stories/091309/bus_492169468.shtml