Product

The product or service or often the combination of both.

Pharmaceuticals or Medicines are pharmaceutical products (active ingredient in a delivery medium) plus information in a context.

The context includes:

• the individual with unique physiology and psychology (personality, motivations, fears and expectations)
• the culture
• the health care system
• the political system
• and the economy etc

Consequently pharmaceuticals can be inproved by improving the active ingredient or the delivery medium or the information to match the context.

"The best way to increase the sale of a product is to improve the product. This is particularly true of food products; the consumer is amazingly quick to notice an improvement in taste and buy the product more often. I have often been irritated by the lack of interest brand managers take in improving their products. One client warned me,"You are too prone to criticize oour products. We would find it easier to accept criticism of our wives." (original emphasis)

However it is more difficult for individual doctors and patients to evaluate teh cost benefit ratios for pharmaceuticals than to evaluate satisfaction from food. This is because of the palcebo effect, regression to the mean and spontateous recovery.

Products may go through life cycles from:

Research Development Introduction Growth Maturity Saturation Decline

Ogilvy D. Ogilvy on advertising. London. Multimedia Books. 1983