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by vonmoltke 2656 days ago
> In European countries the marketing spend[ing] is essentially zero for all companies since they are banned from advertising.

Companies are prohibited from advertising to doctors? I thought it was just direct-to-consumer.

1 comments

It appears you are correct. Direct to consumer advertising is heavily regulated but not outright banned. In Germany in 2017 the advertising expenditure was around 1.6 billion euros. In 2017 advertising expenditures in the U.S. were 24 billion dollars. There appears to be a big disparity in advertising amounts in the EU vs. the U.S. Germany’s population is more than 1/5 the population of the U.S. and spends far less than 1/5 of the U.S. advertising budget.

From [1] it appears that U.S. sales for pharmaceuticals are double the figure for the EU. This suggests that advertising, lack of regulatory controls on pricing, and R&D account for this. Since medical costs are exspensive in the U.S. at the point of contact and the U.S. spends twice per capita GDP on healthcare people are indignant at the system and things like direct to consumer advertising is an easy target for our ire.

I don’t know if English is your native language but “marketing spend” is correct and “marketing spending” is not.

[1] https://www.efpia.eu/media/361960/efpia-pharmafigures2018_v0...