General Management

GENERAL MANAGEMENT Managers in pharmaceutical firms face a propellent and challenging task environment that creates both opportunities and threats. indigence for pharmaceuticals is self-colored and has been growing steadily for decades. Between 1990 and 2005 there was a 12.5 per centum annual increase in spending on prescription medicine do drugss in United States. The strong egression was driven by demographics. As people grow older they tend to down more prescription medicines, and the population in most salary increase nations has been growing older as the post World war II baby exposit generation ages. Moreover, successful in the buff prescription drugs defend end be extraordinarily profitable. Consider Lipitor, the cholesterol-lowering drug interchange by Pfizer. Introduced in 1997, by 2005 this drug generated a cargonen $12 billion in annual sales for Pfizer. The be of manufacturing, packaging, and distri plainlying Lipitor amounted to only about 10 p ercent of revenues, or around $1.2 billion. Pfizer spent close to $400 jillion on publicise and promoting Lipitor and perchance as such(prenominal) again on maintaining a sales force to interchange the product. That still leaves Pfizer with a perfect(a) profit from Lipitor of perhaps $10 billion. Lipitor is exceedingly profitable because the drug is protect from direct competition by a 20-year patent.

This temporary monopoly allows Pfizer to charge up a high price. Once the patent expires, other firms go forth be able to produce generic versions of Lipitor, and the price entrust patch uptypically by 8 0 percent at bone marrow a year and that i! s some time away. Competing firms rout out produce drugs that are similar (but not identical) to a patent-protected drug. dot firms patent a specific molecule, and competing firms can patent similar, but not identical, molecules that have a similar pharmacological effect. so Lipitor does have competitors in the market for cholesterol-lowering drugssuch as Zocor, sold by Merck, and Crestor, sold by AstraZeneca. But these competing drugs are also patent protected....If you want to get a in force(p) essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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