Modeling the effects of promotional efforts on aggregate pharmaceutical demand: What we know and challenges for the future

Pharmaceutical marketing is becoming an important area of research in its own right, as evidenced by the steady increase in relevant papers published in the major marketing journals in recent years. These papers utilize different modeling techniques and types of data. In this chapter we focus on empirical research that studies the effect of marketing on aggregate pharmaceutical demand and we start with an overview of the most important published work. We then focus on two questions that are particularly relevant for the pharmaceutical market: (1) How do marketing variables affect the diffusion pattern of newly introduced pharmaceutical innovations? (2) How do dynamics influence pharmaceutical marketing effectiveness? We conclude with a look at some issues for the future along with an associated research agenda.