Professional marketing

Abstract

The concept of professionals endorsing products is relevant in product categories where the end consumer is typically not qualified to make the decision autonomously. Professionals who can endorse products are highly skilled individuals in their respective fields. The most common example of professionals endorsing products is that of medical practitioners. Medical practitioners possess skills that end consumers do not and this disparity makes end consumers dependent on them to make product purchase decisions for them. As a result, the purchase decision of the patient is entirely made by the medical practitioner prescribing the medicine. Hence, the end consumer for a drug company is not the patient, but the medical practitioner. This is why medical representatives of drug companies hound medical practitioners as they wield the ultimate influence over the purchase decisions of patients. In short, professional marketing is the byword in any product category where the end consumer is unqualified to make the product purchase decision independently. In the pharma industry, the need for medical representatives to pitch to medical practitioners is even greater due to the glaring lack of differentiation in the products. While branded drugs are simply the same molecule sold under varying brand names, generic drugs are cheaper alternatives. While functionally, various brands of the same molecule remain the same, medical practitioners choose to prescribe one brand over the other for varying reasons. This set of influencers that sway medical practitioners remain the Holy Grail for pharma companies the world over. The army of medical representatives that each pharma company employs seeks to do just that, convincing medical practitioners to prescribe their brand of a certain molecule over brands of rival pharma companies as well as generics. While the medical practitioner is the primary decision maker for consumers in the pharma industry, there is still the last mile to be addressed by pharma majors. The last mile consists of the thousands of chemists who convert the prescription of a medical practitioner into an actual product purchase. Chemists also wield considerable amount of power with the consumer as they have the ability to alter the product purchase decision of a patient independent of the medical practitioner. A chemist can achieve this simply by comparing similar products on price and conveying the same to the consumer. The consumer may then take a rational decision irrespective of what the medical practitioner may have prescribed. Hence, there is a need for pharma companies to address not only medical practitioners but chemists as well. The primary aim of a medical representative in short is to make sure the medical practitioner prescribes his brand to the patient followed up by the chemist actually delivering the same to the patient.