The course will give an overview of the pharmaceutical industry and how marketing has become essential even for one of the most R&D-heavy industries. Many people – also within the pharmaceutical companies themselves - find marketing circumspect and believe pharmaceuticals should be sold on scientific merits only. However, R&D productivity has fallen and companies need to maximize return on each and every innovation just to survive. Therefore, the pharmaceutical industry is a good place to learn about recurrent as well as future challenges for marketeers, e.g:

• How to ensure customer-focus throughout product development?
• How to differentiate products with similar functionality?
• How to comply with tougher and tougher regulation?

The course will provide a theoretical understanding and a practical grasp of pharmaceutical marketing and leverage the expertise that has been developed by the Danish pharmaceutical industry. During the course, participants should dissect challenging case studies and thus prepare themselves for strategic brand management issues in an international context. Key learnings include how to develop pharmaceuticals, how to launch and brand a new product, how to price, how to manage a wide array of stakeholders, as well as what other industries can learn from the pharmaceutical industry.

The course will introduce participants to the fundamentals of pharmaceutical marketing management, including for example:

• What is the role of marketing in the pharmaceutical industry:Few industries are under such close scrutiny by authorities and consumer groups, and stakes are high and increasing; the development of a new pharmaceutical product costs 800 million USD and more often than not new product have few, functional benefits, ie. marketing makes the difference. However, many industries are experiencing the same trends and could learn from the pharmaceutical industry…
• How are pharmaceuticals developed:Pharmaceutical products can take 10-15 years to develop and often result in products that are difficult to distinguish from competitor’s. This can of course be mediated if the marketing strategy is clear and succinct from the start and incorporated into product development!
• Who are the customers:Purchase decisions are made by many different people, including authorities, physicians, patients, nurses, payers, patient groups etc. Therefore it is essential to understand customers and purchase factors well before a product is even developed
• How to launch a new product:Similar to other industries, first impressions and exposure counts are important, but since pharmaceutical companies have some of the biggest budgets and sales forces of any industry the difference between success and failure of a single product can mean life or death of a company
• How to extend the lifecycle:The pharmaceutical industry is increasingly relying on line extensions and new uses for old products to maintain sales after the first patents have expired

• A compendium will be developed for the course as current literature does not sufficiently cover the course material