Healthy Skepticism Library item: 9434

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: Journal Article

Jernigan JM, Smith MC, Banahan BF, Juergens JP.
Descriptive analysis of the 15-year product life cycles of a sample of pharmaceutical products
Journal of Pharmaceutical Marketing Management 1991; 6:(1):3-36

Abstract:

A description of the 15-year trends of new prescription volumes of a sample of new chemical entity (NCE) drug products introduced from 1963 to 1972, using the product life cycle (PLC) concept, was accomplished by identifying an appropriate sample of new drug products, graphically plotting the new prescription volume of each product as a percentage of the maximum number of new prescriptions attained by each specific drug product over a 15-year period, and assessing the curves visually and determining whether the six PLC curves observed by Cox in a 1963 study are representative and exhaustive in the post-Kefauver 1962 Amendment era. The findings suggest that the classic curve type predominates among new chemical entity drug products introduced between 1963 and 1972. The study reaffirmed the existence of at least 5 of the curves observed by Cox and also revealed an additional curve type, the precycle-cycle combinations. The success of the present study was determined by the verification and identification of the PLC curve types that exist following the 1962 Kefauver-Harris Amendments.