Results from a recently released report on the return on investment for drug marketing dollars held some interesting implications for physician meetings and events. While total drug marketing dollars grew 13.7 percent in the 1995-2000 period covered in the study, PME spending grew 22.1 percent per year, second only in growth to direct-to-consumer promotion, which grew 44.3 percent annually. The other two promotion areas included in the study—detailing and journal advertising—grew 7.1 percent and 7.6 percent, respectively.
In a followup Q&A session after Dick Wittink, PhD, professor of management and marketing at the Yale School of Management presented the study findings at the Association of Medical Publications meeting in September, Dean Slack, director of strategic analysis with Bayer Corp., called it "no less than a landmark study part 2." Part 1, conducted by Scott Neslin, PhD, professor of marketing at the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, found even more aggressive growth in PME: 23.6 percent annually, with an increase in revenue spent per marketing dollar of $3.56.
The most recent study’s results also suggested that the most promising targets for additional resources are PME, detailing and journal advertising for large-revenue brands with that were launched after 1997. Results of the study and a webcast of Wittink’s presentation are available at www.rxpromoroi.org.
