Marketing dimensions in the prescription pharmaceutical industry: a systematic literature review

The pharmaceutical market is experiencing significantly amplified research and development costs, as well as increasing price and other competitive pressures. This article presents a much-needed systematic review of the literature relevant to pharmaceutical marketing. The authors find that the order-of-entry effect is critical in the sector, but that both early- and late-entry strategies can be effective when coupled with the appropriate marketing strategies. Within this context, the present study reveals that promotion policy is the most relevant, followed by price policy, with product design policy surprisingly only third in importance. Distribution (place) is the least relevant in the pharmaceutical context. These findings are used to drive an agenda for future research in pharmaceutical marketing.