Pharmaceutical Marketing & Product Promotion: A Paradigm Shift in Indian Pharmaceutical Industry (IPI)

The Indian pharmaceuticals' market is third largest in terms of volume and thirteen largest in terms of value, as per a pharmaceuticals sector analysis report by equity master. The market is dominated majorly by branded generics which constitute nearly 70 to 80 per cent of the market. Considered to be a highly fragmented industry, consolidation has increasingly become an important feature of the Indian pharmaceutical market. India has achieved an eminent global position in pharma sector. Country also has a huge pool of scientists and engineers who have the potential to take the industry to a very high level. Indian pharmaceutical industry is estimated to grow at 20 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next five years, as per India Ratings, a Fitch Group company. Indian pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities registered with US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as on March 2014 was the highest at 523 for any country outside the US. In Indian Pharmaceutical Industry detailing has always been an integral part of doctors' communication for over the last three to four decades. All the Health Care Providers (HCPs) are struggling to manage their time schedule, the print communication gets poor attention with hardly 5-10% of the total message delivered at time. Many a times, the doctor says that he has seen the medical representative over and over again and asks the sales representative to just name the brand and/or leave samples and move on. All the cumulative hard work of the brand manager, marketing manager and the sales representative goes for a toss when the doctor does that. A major complaint of the field people, including managers, is that they cannot talk beyond the brand name and one or two points; just because they had a bad experience with the doctor not being receptive or not allowing them to speak more and the same has become a common phenomenon. With the advent of technology, video content, graphics, motion and interactivity, and newer digital tools are challenging this visual aid and redefining communication. This version of detailing adds an ‘e’ of electronic to it, making it completely different from the current mode of communication, where the electronic detailing aid is used by the medical representatives in person-to-person call. In this paper the researcher has given his endeavour to identify the key factors influencing adoption of e-detailing as a Pharmaceutical Marketing Communication by incorporating the views of Health Care Providers (HCPs) of India.