Pharmaceutical Executive-11-01-2001

Government efforts to trim budgets has put the spotlight on unethical pharma marketing tactics.

The September 11 attacks on the United States caused pharma shares to fall along with others, but as investors switched to safe stocks, considered less susceptible to cyclical consumer trends, they rebounded. On September 12, broker WestLB Panmure raised its recommendation of the pharma sector from "neutral" to "outperform," favoring Sanofi-Synthelabo, Novo-Nordisk, Shire Pharmaceuticals, and GSK.

Sampling is a sales rep's foot in the door to doctors' offices and the quickest way to get products into consumers' hands. That's why reps handed out $5 billion worth of the freebies last year, spending 30 percent of companies' promotional budgets in the process. Despite that huge investment, few product managers can assess its impact on product inventory, consumer demand, prescription rates, or market share. But sampling's greatest failure is its inability to provide the healthcare industry with product-use or patient data.

A growing number of physicians are expressing interest in working in the pharmaceutical industry. Many are motivated by the desire to get as far away from managed clinical care as possible. Others want to broaden their sphere of influence in healthcare-to move from treating one patient at a time to helping an entire patient population. Still others are excited by the chance to participate in well funded cutting-edge innovation or are influenced by colleagues who have moved into pharmaceutical medicine and are vocal about their enhanced career satisfaction.