Background and Purpose: The Massachusetts Male Aging Study found 52% of men aged 40 to 70 years suffered from erectile dysfunction (ED). Approximately two millions men in Taiwan were ED suffers, only 10% of them had taken Viagra®. The potential market is very attractive to pharmatheutical industry. By law, ED medicines are prescriptive drugs; in practice, more than 80% of ED drugs were sold without prescription in Taiwan. The launch of Levitra® and Cialis® has boosted the competition in the ED drug market. The purposes of this study are 1) to compare the marketing strategies of Viagra®, Levitra® and Cialis®, 2) to analyze factors influencing physicians¡¦ prescription, 3) to analyze factors affecting drug purchasers¡¦ decision, and 4) to survey the preference of drugstores owners on selling these drugs.
Materials and Methods: The first step is face-to-face, in-depth interviews with product mangers to understand their marketing strategies. We will ask them to rate the significance of factors (e.g. efficacy, safety, price) affecting physicians¡¦ and patients¡¦ preference. Product mangers will be requested to rate the importance and relevance of the way product messages delivered to doctors¡¦ prescription behaviors. Questionnaires will be mailed to all urologists in Taiwan to survey factors they concerned when prescribing. We use mailing questionnaires and face-to-face interviews to assess the impact of drug efficacy, duration, safety, etc. on drug purchasers¡¦ decision. Drugstores owners will be interviewed to understand their favor in promoting certain drug. Comparative studies will be done to evaluate the difference between product mangers, physicians and patients.
Results The marketing strategy of Pfizer is to emphasize the well-documented efficacy and long-term safety of Viagra® by seminars for physicians. Educational talks will be given to the public to explore the potential consumers. The goal of Bayer is to urge the silent ED suffers search for medical help, and to convince physicians that Levitra® is the drug of choice for ED patients. Eli-Lilly put almost all their marketing efforts and resources in drugstores. Drug efficacy and safety are most important factors influencing physicians¡¦ prescription. Approximately 85% of urologists surveyed favor Viagra®, 21% have safety concern on Cialis®. Most urologists considered Levitra® as alternative of Viagra® when failed. All product mangers overestimate the impact of key opinion leaders, literature, and seminars on physicians¡¦ prescription behaviors. Patients¡¦ survey disclosed that drug efficacy and safety are most important factors affecting drug purchasing. As compared to physicians, patients have more concern on the time of onset and duration. About 20% of drug purchasers are not ED suffers; 62% of purchasing is sporadic, one third of Viagra® users have the attempt to try other ED drugs. The drugstores owners have no specific preference for any drugs.
Conclusions The extension of life expectancy and open discussion of male ED problem had resulted in tremendous growth of ED drug market. The launch of new drug may stimulate the selling amount in short run; the long-term market shares depend mainly on the drug efficacy and safety. In our study, we found that safety profile is the main concern for both physicians and drug purchasers. We believed that Viagra® may stay as the market leader, while Levitra® may have only small market share. Certain groups of drug purchasers, especially fake ED suffers and those who with multiple sex-partners will have high brand loyalty to Cialias®.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0522104-122729 |
| Date | 22 May 2004 |
| Creators | T. Wu., Tony |
| Contributors | Ming-rea Kao, David Shyu, Stephen D. Tsai, Pei-how Huang |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | Cholon |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0522104-122729 |
| Rights | withheld, Copyright information available at source archive |
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