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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18572

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Electronic Source

Edwards J
Betting on the Male Libido: Viagra Price Hikes No Bar to Sales
BNet 2010 Aug 10
http://www.bnet.com/blog/drug-business/betting-on-the-male-libido-viagra-price-hikes-no-bar-to-sales/5399


Full text:

Last year, Pfizer (PFE) saw sales of Viagra decline for the first time ever, after years of annual price hikes that doubled its cost. It raised an interesting question: Is male desire for sex price-sensitive? Come Q2 2010, however, there’s been a return to normalcy: Sales are up again by 16 percent to $491 million, despite further price hikes. (They rose in Q1 also.)

No matter how much the company charges, men – and their various insurance programs and reimbursers – want this product. A Milwaukee teachers’ union is currently litigating to keep Viagra covered by its taxpayer-funded healthcare program. The battle is making the union look ridiculous, but the union doesn’t care: The teachers just want their pills.

It’s the same situation over at Eli Lilly (LLY), which markets Cialis. Sales grew 11 percent to $419 million in Q2, based on both increased volume and increased prices, the company reported.

Put this anecdotal evidence together with the “reason” Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Mark Hurd resigned and you have your business lesson: Only a fool bets against the male libido.

 

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Cases of wilful misrepresentation are a rarity in medical advertising. For every advertisement in which nonexistent doctors are called on to testify or deliberately irrelevant references are bunched up in [fine print], you will find a hundred or more whose greatest offenses are unquestioning enthusiasm and the skill to communicate it.

The best defence the physician can muster against this kind of advertising is a healthy skepticism and a willingness, not always apparent in the past, to do his homework. He must cultivate a flair for spotting the logical loophole, the invalid clinical trial, the unreliable or meaningless testimonial, the unneeded improvement and the unlikely claim. Above all, he must develop greater resistance to the lure of the fashionable and the new.
- Pierre R. Garai (advertising executive) 1963