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Yes, I agree, I'm a big supporter of the pharmaceutical industry, it seems from random conversations that a significant proportion of people just think they are crooks, but clearly developing and testing drugs is expensive, that has to be paid for somehow, and private companies are completely indispensable to the process of drug development. But, marketing is where my support starts to peter out. It seems crazy that marketing takes up such a large percentage of expenditure, it's not only wasteful but also introduces perverse incentives. I really think it would be great if trade deals could establish not just concessions like mandated strong intellectual property laws or restricted bulk negotiation, but also serious limitations on the other side of the coin, on something like pharma marketing. If deep trade deals are justified by shaping the market to be at its most productive, I don't mind if that increases profits most of the time, but occasionally there will be measures that will improve the market but also reduce short term profit for some existing major players. In practice, under the current situation the market is structured so that a profitable pharma company has to be good at generating demand, just as much as meeting a need. A company that can do the latter but not the former will go bust. I think a world with more emphasis on judgements made by clinical research organizations (private or public) like NICE or the Cochrane Foundation rather than TV adverts, wine-ing and dining, and the nag factor on patients and overworked individual practitioners, would end up with a drastically more effective market for actually finding cures. |
How much do drug companies spend on marketing? I've only ever seen article mention SG&A which is an accounting catch all for more than just marketing.