Dr. Shahzad Khan, Director Marketing of Getz Pharma, one of the leading Pakistani pharmaceutical firms, visited the Lahore School to attend a conference on manufacturing, and also gave a talk to the MBA class on March 25, 2015 on Pharmaceutical Marketing.
In the talk he positioned Getz as a research-driven, branded generic, Pharma manufacturing company with a global outlook. He explained that as patents ran out and as companies marketed generic medicines, the role of branded generics became very important. And thus the role of marketing came to the fore.
Company could manufacture medicines but could not advertize its products and thus to create value and to communicate it to the customers (doctors) it had some 2000 medical representatives who went to the doctors on continuous basis to convince them to prescribe its products – for which a strong relationship with the doctor was a must.
"We also delivered value through branding the generics – REISIG was our largest brand and the second largest in the country. There were 400 brands in the same molecule (omeprezole) and we differentiated on the basis of quality, social responsibility and offering the best service to the doctor," said Dr. Shahzad Khan.
Distribution also played an important role in the marketing of products. Mueller and Phipps were Getz’s distributor. Some 80% products were distributed through normal channels while the remaining were cold chain products. Pricing was a big issue in Pharma sector in Pakistan as there had been no raises since 2001.
Pricing was done first by the Government committee – say the price of the research molecule was Rs. 100 – the government committee could set Rs. 80 as the branded generic price as maximum retail price. Then our company would look at its competition and set Rs. 50 as its price. Sometimes one had to think about selling at a loss, hoping that the raw material would become cheaper and the profits would flow.