Patient centricity and business networks in the pharmaceutical industry

Abstract

Pharmaceutical companies aim to be patient-centric in their actions and want to create value for the final user of their products. However, industry regulations prohibit direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription medicine, which restricts the level of interaction between pharmaceutical companies and patients greatly.

As a consequence, pharmaceutical companies need to find alternative ways to to get around the strict regulations. They must interact with different stakeholders in order to (1) gain knowledge about patient needs (2) ensure that their products reach the final user. This helps them both with developing new medicine and marketing existing products.

The aim of my research was to examine how pharmaceutical companies create and maintain networks with different stakeholders in order to create value for the final user, i.e. the patient. My theory was that pharmaceutical companies execute market orientation by interacting with stakeholders (such as healthcare professionals and patient organizations) in order to detect patient needs. I use literature on market orientation, customer orientation, and business networks to build a coherent framework for examining the phenomenon.

For the empirical part of my thesis, I interviewed representatives of a Finnish subsidiary of a multinational pharmaceutical company in order to gain a wholesome view on the collaborators that pharmaceutical companies interact with in order to create value for the patient. My findings support the notion that pharmaceutical companies are market oriented and aim to detect customer needs with the help of their stakeholders in order to develop superior products and t0 ensure that the existing products reach the end user that most benefits from the treatment.