Practitioner Perspectives on Key Challenges in Pharmaceutical Marketing and Future Research Opportunities

This article offers marketing and public policy researchers and professionals a peek into pharmaceutical marketing from the practitioner's perspective. Through an interview process with eight active pharmaceutical marketing managers and medical doctors, the authors highlight some of the most pressing challenges facing pharmaceutical marketing practitioners today. They identify three key themes: (1) the need to overcome strongly rooted negative patient perceptions of the pharmaceutical industry, (2) the need to communicate overwhelming amounts of complicated information to patients and physicians, and (3) the need to break away from a stale promotional model. The authors briefly summarize the practitioners' views on each topic, highlight relevant findings from marketing and public policy literatures, and offer avenues for future research to help address these challenges.