An examination of the evolution of marketing in the pharmaceutical industry.
This paper discusses the growth of the pharmaceutical industry from 1900-1960 and addresses the factors that contributed to the development of pharmaceuticals at industry level. The paper looks at the development of pharmaceutical companies and pharmaceutical marketing, the development of the current marketing environment and the future of pharmaceutical marketing. The paper concludes that pharmaceutical marketing has outgrown the traditional methods of marketing and the future of marketing lies exclusively with the Internet.
“Prior to the 1800s, little pharmaceutical manufacturing took place. Medications were largely compounded from a small range of drugs. As a result, manufacturing of medications remained a cottage industry for a long period of time catering to a limited number of customers in the surrounding geographic area. The apothecary shops were largely owned by a select number of physicians who also happened to run them as well. This was why the drug shops remained exclusively for the use of the owner-practitioner. Therefore medications were compounded only to serve the practitioner’s prescription. As a result of lack of large-scale research, the medical knowledge remained sketchy and non-uniform. This in turn affected the chances for any large-scale manufacturing.”