Reuters Events | Pharma

Thought leadership and innovation for the Pharmaceutical Industry

Segmentation in the pharmaceutical arena is a myth: most talk about it, but very few do it. Now is the time to adopt this arguably most fundamental principle of marketing in practice.

Segmentation in the pharmaceutical arena is a myth: most talk about it, but very few do it. Now is the time to adopt this arguably most fundamental principle of marketing in practice. Marketing is all about ensuring that an organisation effectively identifies and meets the needs of it's customers profitably. Products and services are designed to meet needs, and the extent to which customer needs vary is the extent to which we need to segment markets.

Half a century or so ago, the rail industry hit a difficult patch as its growth slowed significantly. The reason it stopped growing was not that people did not need transportation any longer, but that their needs were being served better by alternatives such as cars and aeroplanes. In more recent times, the need for portable music on the go has not diminished: it has just moved from the Walkman to the MP3 player and, more recently, to the mobile phone. These examples show that although customer needs have not changed significantly, new technologies have been used to serve them better.

Even though our markets are different, we need to adopt the principle and technique of market segmentation if we want to meet customers needs. Any thoughts on why this appears to be so difficult to implement?