Successful drug companies, trade outlets, and allied health institutions to a large extent, depend on the () as the main system for monitoring and adapting to the increasingly changing pharmaceutical marketplace.

As we very well know, the marketing practice is not just simply selling or advertising as perceived by most people, but more importantly, a whole process of matching the company to its best (), “Selling with all its complexities, is only a phase of the total marketing effort.

t represents one of the so-called marketing functions, defined as those activities which help facilitate the flow of goods from the producer to the consumer. All () activities are aimed at fostering increased sales at some time and in some way.

 In fact, such activities are designed purposely to winning a large, secure share of () markets”. () are convenient where buyers and sellers can meet face-to-face to exchange goods and services

The marketing management process consists of the following:

Drugstore-owners, community pharmacists, hospital chief pharmacists, hospital administrators and marketers in the drug industry, throughout the marketing management process, undoubtedly, needed resources to strongly build a() of drug industry information, to appropriately and significantly analyze pharmaceutical market opportunities such as the attitudes, perceptions, feelings, impressions, or buying motivations of consumers or end-users for drug products; likewise, the need for () information pertaining to the external and internal environment likely to affect the pharmaceutical business

The former includes the ()forces, competitors, suppliers, resellers and publics in the drug industry

On the other hand, the () sources refers to the company’s internal records, pharmaceutical marketing research, marketing intelligence, and management information system in the Total Health Care Delivery System

All these () forces in one way or the other, affect the pharmaceutical company and its consumers, either favorable or otherwise. We cannot therefore afford to be complacent or mediocre in our expectations, attitudes and overall performance, particularly on our present drug products, services and markets, in a highly volatile environment constantly bombarded with ()() problems from within and without, and it is this regard, that we in the drug industry go to the trouble of transforming all these seemingly endless obstacles into opportunities, or at least minimizing the threats, or turning possible weaknesses into strengths or optimizing available resources to continually search for new ideas or ways of doing the right things right, the first time, anytime and all the time, offering better value or maximum satisfaction to target markets.

Marketing opportunities in the drug industry are in abundance for us to make use of, to the fullest purposes of growth, leadership, and survival. We need to promptly identify new() for our present products, markets, and respective businesses, so that we can best realize timely and accurate information about customers, competitors, distributors, and dealers, suppliers and other forces in the marketplace to improve significantly our position or standing in the drug industry.

We need () information to generate more responsive marketing techniques in the light of keen competition and adverse situations that hinders us from achieving desired results.

We need such information to test or validate the effectiveness of our marketing tools; more than ever, we need() information to favorably develop a confidence in many of our major decisions both in the short term and future goals, as we plunged into a series of calculated risks towards aggressively implementing a well-balanced marketing program to intelligently propel our businesses to greater heights of success.

To ably meet the challenge, we therefore need to carefully design and install a ()(), to solidly back-up marketing decisions critically vital and urgent as called for, by the need of the times. Information is power, and the company that creatively crystallizes them into meaningful outputs, in a normal or crisis atmosphere, undoubtedly, are several steps ahead of competition, more powerful and on firm ground, all the time and always.

Many drug companies and drug outlets, are servicing different kinds of pharmaceutical consumers with too many different kinds of needs and wants. While it may not be completely possible to optimally satisfy all these consumers or segments or sub-segments of the market at any given time, place and resources allocated, so therefore, it is but fitting and proper, that we clearly identify and choose only the() that can profitably be served better than direct competitors

s. Kotler, enumerated four steps to address the issue at hand, namely:

Drug companies are able to make a careful estimate of the current market size of the drug industry, its various market segments and sub-market segments, the competing products, their current sales, and market potential through the IMS, SEC records, and other research agencies and developments in the marketplace

The future market growth for tendencies for health-conscious people towards self-diagnosis and selfmedication practices. It is highly imperative that in today’s () marketing environment, we are able to measure and forecast the immediate impact of these practices into quantifiable terms with respect to product demands and market growth potential for OTC drugs so that timely and appropriate marketing decisions could be implemented in full force.

Drug companies periodically prepare product () in units and absolute amounts, annually broken-down into semestral, quarter and monthly targets, based on several factors in the external and internal environment.

These forecasts or targets are further divided into therapeutic segments and sub-segments, by ()()()()s.

Drug outlets do the same in forecasting demand for drug products that are ()()() and implement market approaches to significantly meet forecasted demand