Abstract:

Price sensitivity (or elasticity) is an aspect which has always had to be faced as an integral part of pre-launch and post-launch research in the consumer fields. Now it has to be faced seriously in the pharmaceutical field. But can we just take the methods which have been applied in the consumer field and apply them directly to the pharmaceutical field or do they have to be adapted in some way? This paper will limit itself to: - Evaluating the specificities of the pharmaceutical market, in order to highlight the different types of markets which exist; - Examining the implications of the type of market on the evaluation of the cost of a drug and hence the need to understand the market context when interpreting the results of a price sensitivity measurement exercise.