This month’s published document for The Orange Pages continues the analysis of the Latin American pharmaceutical marketplace begun last month. While the previous discussion focused on findings uncovered through an Internet search, this document humanizes the discovery process by providing insights gained from a summit with key GfK associates working in Latin America. At the meeting, we were able to get an up close and personal look at the opportunities and challenges of health care delivery and pharmaceutical marketing in these countries as experienced by our colleagues.
Similar to last month’s Orange Pages, this module examines the health care sector and pharmaceutical market of specific “Latam” countries (which we learned from our summit participants to call all countries south of Mexico), including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela and Colombia, as well as providing commentary on Mexico and Central America.
By offering these two Orange Pages modules, we hope the pharmaceutical marketer or marketing researcher can get a feeling for the differences and similarities between Latin America and the United States and across Latam countries themselves. Clearly, the most important commonality is the pressure, typically from government rather than health care insurers, in each of these countries to make more use of generic products. Thus, while the population in the region is growing significantly, barriers to major profitability exist. An additional learning is that growing economic success in some countries has allowed them to spend more on health care and pharmaceuticals than other countries. Finally, it is no surprise to see that the roles of the various stakeholders and the rules of the game are very different than we are used to in developed countries.
As a last thought, it is important to keep in mind that the Orange Pages modules were designed to provide a quick review, based on an Internet search and informal conversation, as to what potentials and pitfalls await us in the Latam and other developing countries. Much more rigorous and organized research, as well as training, will be required if we are to optimize in these largely uncharted regions.
To download the complete April 2008 discussion on Latin America as a prototype of global pharmaceutical marketing research, please click here.
The monthly issue-based discussions that we publish in this newsletter
can also be distributed to you in hardcopy format via a complimentary
subscription-based resource we publish for our clients called The
Orange Pages. The Orange Pages is intended to serve
as a living, breathing resource of “Information, Education and
Issues Exploration for Today’s Pharmaceutical Marketing Researcher”
that we hope will be read with interest and kept within reach for
ongoing reference.
The format is a three-ring binder designed to hold packets of content
that we will develop and distribute on a variety of topics. Content
packets will come to you in an easy-to-identify (and appropriately
colored) orange envelope and be delivered on a monthly basis. The
materials will be three-hole punched for convenient one-click assembly
into your binder.
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