Understanding the Factors that Impact the Pre-Launch Phase and New Product Launch Excellence in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Abstract

Background: The pharmaceutical industry began to rely heavily on new product development looking for achieving an excellent NPL process. That’s why, pharmaceutical marketing started to emphasize the pre-launch phase for the pharmaceutical products and began to apply many strategies, tactics, and activities to ensure launch readiness and successful market understanding and acceptance. Existing literature that elicits theoretical and empirical evidence regarding the pre-launch phase and its impact on the launch readiness is limited. Purpose: This research aims to identify the key success factors that impact the excellence of the new product launch process in the pharmaceutical industry. Methodology: A theoretical framework was developed from existing relevant literature then tested and empirical research was conducted using qualitative analysis technique via interviews with experts from the pharmaceutical field to get their insights. Findings: The findings indicate that there are 7 factors that are impacting the excellence of the NPL process. These factors are cross-functional collaboration, market analysis, pre-launch medical activities, pricing strategies, early access programs, human resources allocation and supply chain management strategies. In addition to that the excellence measures have been stratified into qualitative measures, like customer acceptance and gaining high advocacy level of KOLs, and quantitative measures that represent the financial success of the drug in terms of rapid market penetration, gaining MS and the magnitude of MS gain. Limitations: The sample size was small and such a small sample size directed the sampling technique to be purposive sampling which may impact the representation of the total population. Moreover, the empirical data were influenced by the existing factors supposed by literature. Practical Implications: Planning and emphasizing on prelaunch phase is crucial for the excellence of NPL. Moreover, considering the 7 mentioned factors is important for ensuring the qualitative and quantitative success of the new product introduction to the market.