Phizer Marketing and Products - Essay Example

The ultimate aim of every marketing activities of Pfizer is to maximize sales through increased prescription writing. Pfizer know that majority of the patients all over the world are purchasing medicines based on the prescriptions from their doctors. So, Pfizer’s advertising strategies give number one priority to doctors rather than patients. They know very well that once the doctor prescribes their medicine, most of the patients may purchase it without a second thought. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of drugs has been legal in the USA since 1985, but only really took off in 1997 when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) eased up on a rule obliging companies to offer a detailed list of side-effects in their infomercials (Direct-to-consumer advertising under fire, 2009) Targeted ads are possible nowadays because of the rapidly increasing popularity of internet and social media.

Sending of customized emails is one of the major marketing strategy implemented by many of the prominent organizations like Pfizer. Pfizer uses social media like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc to reach out individual customers. In short, Direct To Consumer advertising (DTC) is one of the prominent advertising channels in Pfizer’s’ marketing activities. . “The New York Times reports that Pfizer is planning to lock up the market for heart treatments by bundling its new drug (toretrapib, which is still in experimental stage of development) to the company's bestselling cholesterol lowering drug, Lipitor” (Pfizer Marketing Scheme Stirs Concern_NYT, 2005).

The aim of Pfizer is to have two birds for one shot. In other words, they are trying to exploit the publicity and brand value generated by its new product for selling some of their existing products. Even though the above marketing strategy has raised many criticisms, Pfizer do not bother about such criticisms and they are going ahead with the marketing strategy of forcing the heart patients to purchase more Pfizer products. “Marketing activities with health care professionals must convey full and substantiated information about the side effects and the safety profile of medicines” (Practicing ethical sales and marketing, 2011).

In order to strengthen the bondage between the consumers and the company, Pfizer reveals the side effects associated with each of the drug they sell. The above strategy helped Pfizer to increase the confidence of the people over Pfizer products. It should be noted that most of the other pharmaceutical companies do not have the habit of revealing the side effects of their products in their marketing campaigns because of their concerns about the possible negative impacts. Pfizer always believe in telling the truth to the consumers which helped them to increase the relationships with its customers.

Pfizer succeeded in partitioning the entire market based on the differences in the purchasing behaviors of the consumers. “Segmentation analysis is actually based on the theoretical belief that every