Pricing strategies are set as per company objective, market sensitivity, product category, competition etc.
There are selective successful pricing strategies in pharmaceutical marketing are discussed as,
1. Marginal Cost Pricing:
In simple terms “marginal cost pricing is the cost of producing one more unit as fixed cost already been covered with existing sales volume”. It means company utilizes its capacity for additional production where profit on small sales remains same but chances of additional margin may increase. Marginal cost pricing is helpful when company gets a bulk order from any institution tender or hospital supply to supply were quoting lowest price is more productive.
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Torrent pharmaceutical Ltd a Gujarat based pharmaceutical company has their brand Hexidol well settled in market. Hexidol has been used as an anti-psychotic drug containing Halo- peridol molecule. In open market its price per strip of 10 tablets is Rs 30.
But for the sake of bulk purchase order by any hospital or institute they keep their marginal cost per strip up to Rs 12 per strip of 10 tablets when order of supply is more then 10000 strips at a time.
Such types of marginal cost pricing quantity at lowest rate prove to be the best for the company to maintain its leadership position in anti-psychotic market and also for full utilization of production capacity.
2. Penetration Strategy:
Penetration strategy aims at deeper end of market pricing strategy. At high sales volume this strategy is profitable and helpful in growth and maturity phase of product life cycle. In this case customer base is very high and profitability is marginal or very low. In long run, if life span of a product is very short then chances of loss are very high.
3. Skimming Pricing Strategy:
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The name itself indicates skimming the cream of strategy i.e. capitalizing the pricing advantages at the introduction of the product itself. This method is successful at the introductory stage of product life cycle and helps to recover the cost of R and D investment on the new product.
The major disadvantage of this strategy is that it increases the vulnerability of competition and high pricing may lead to low per unit sale furthermore that may affects pre unit resource utilization capacity.
The suitable example of skimming strategy is of ‘Deplatt-75’ the brand Gujarat based Tor-rent Pharmaceutical Ltd contains Clopidogrel, a superior molecule as an Anti-platelet agent in cardiovascular therapy. They have introduced at the rate of Rs 299 per strip of 10 tablets in June 2001 and sale had reached up to Rs. 3 Crore within six months.
But suddenly they dropped to Rs 199 per strip of 10 tablets and within six months near about 30 to 40 brand of different companies were entered into market. Then after they had dropped their prices up Rs 39 per strip of 10 tablets that would results into loss of their number one position and landed on sixth position in March 2002 as per ORG-MARG report.
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In addition to this it is very important to mention here that offering bonus offer is commonly seen practice in Indian pharmaceutical marketing especially for seasonal products like cold and cough preparation, general antibiotics etc.
And for sudden price change in market needs to communicate the exact reason that the change like change in packaging, color and flavor, technological up gradation etc. otherwise it may badly affects the image of product and company too.