There are two basic classes of population from the point of pharmaceuticals view. The attitude of these two classes is so divergent that the behaviour which they display towards consumption of medicine is very different.These two classes are sufferers and non-sufferers. Sufferers tend to become hypochondriac and they ensure that they comply with the medicines while non-sufferers believe that nothing is wrong with them and perhaps will go wrong to their health till they cross the border of sufferers.
As demographics of India are creating a very powerful force for growth of every industry, pharma is not an exception. Healthy population as well as sick population is continuously getting updated on medical issues through Internet.
Now the population who consumes medicine whether it pharma or nutraceutical consists of both sick and healthy patients. They exhibit their behaviour of exhibiting their choice in selection of medicines. Coupled with Internet education and their awareness, they feel, they are making the right choice even in high involvement and high-risk products. As a result, they have created a new class of medical consumers.
Patient On-Chat ,Patient Online, Newsletters & Emails:
Out of almost 41 million people who are supposed to be diabetics in India, you will observe that hardly 4 million patients are taking adequate care of themselves through medicines while others might be taking care of their health through alternate medicines or other traditional methods. Having such vast gap between what can accrue through pharma industry what is not really creating in the market for the industry needs to be noticed by all marketers. What should my mind matters is intense and exhausted patient education. It's possible through patient communication.
The Question?- How to communicate with these learned medical consumers?
Answer: ADTC advertising and communication.
Points to keep in mind to make this an Effective Tool:
Quality of product
" Safety of product even at higher dosages
" Continuous availability of information about the product
" Continuous promotion of the product
" Continuous credibility creation and continuous improvement of the product
Consumer looks into packaging, clear directions on label, safety instructions, warnings andother regulatory instructions. He also looks at price and competitive products. Besides, this he may look at bulk pack as one of his convenience if it's day-to-day purchase and consumption.
In order to develop specific action plan marketer needs to carry out following survey:Awareness, understanding existing use of any substitute or a competitor (may not be from the same category), buying patterns, usage and attitude patterns, trends of markets, regions, logistics and capacity to stock these products for different outlets.
PR ,Marketing and Communication Strategy:Pharmaceutical companies should have communication strategy besides main strategy.
sOME eXAMPLES:
Drugdiscoveryonline.com, pharmaceuticalonline.com are good with Newsletters.
SurveryRX is a web based platform that enables a company to conduct online medical market research with physicians across multiple sites in a secure environment.
Today's Featured one: Informed Horizons, LLC - Medical communications company committed to keeping physicians and patients up to date with the latest advances in pharmaceutical research.
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