ABSTRACT
The sales and marketing expenditures, particularly direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, of the pharmaceutical industry have been vilified by some writers in the popular press media as being “excessive.”1 Although advertising represents only one component of the total cost of selling a product, it is an important part of the marketing strategy for patented drugs for many pharmaceutical firms. Marketing has always played a role in the budgets of firms. However, the pharmaceutical industry employs an atypical combination of marketing effort, using personal detailing (that is, professional sales calls by manufacturer representatives); free samples to prescribing clinicians (for example, physicians, nurse practitioners and pharmacists); professional journal advertising, and DTC advertising.
