Summary:

Marketing excellence programmes have become commonplace in the pharmaceutical industry. The concept of these programmes suggests that as industries mature and it becomes harder to differentiate technologically, competitive advantage flows from the ability to segment, position and deliver extended value propositions.

Yet, after 12 years of examination, Dr. Brian Smith finds the results of this up-skilling frenzy disappointing. By and large, these firms describe their marketing excellence programmes as costing lots of money and even more time, but delivering little tangible improvement in capabilities or performance. Why this is can be summarized in seven fundamental flaws that are often embedded into the structure of marketing excellence programmes. For a complete explanation of the seven deadly sins of marketing excellence, follow the link below.

Article Quote:

“The recent blooming of a thousand marketing excellence programmes in the pharmaceutical industry has been one of the most noticeable trends in our industry, but it has not been surprising. The same phenomenon has been observed in other sectors, from consumer goods to cars, from IT to financial services, as technical innovation became a more difficult route to differentiation.”

Link: http://pharmexec.findpharma.com/pharmexec/Europe/The-Seven-Deadly-Sins-of-Marketing-Excellence/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/657777?contextCategoryId=48182

The research conducted by Dr. Brian Smith reveals that the reasons for the pharmaceutical industry’s difficulty in extracting value from marketing excellence lie mostly in the industry culture. The culture assumes that a social science-based discipline like marketing can be managed in the same way as we manage natural science disciplines.

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