Product Launch Strategy
Situation | Offering Benefits
- With the ongoing erosion of branded portfolios, new product launches are often "make or break’"opportunities, with a successful launch being crucial to the ongoing financial health, or even survival, of the company.
- The diversity of the European regulatory environment and the complexity of in-licensing and co-marketing agreements are adding to the challenges of brand launch strategies.
- Many marketing models are overly complex, reducing their applicability and practicality in situations such as partnership agreements covering a proliferation of European countries. Existing models need to be simplified and refined to the specific situation.
Executive Insight will help to ensure that European brand launches:
- Establish a two way relationship between strategic and tactical launch decisions
- Develop a mechanism for evaluating decisions, at an EU and national level, and identifying alternative strategies and tactics
- Define a clear approach to assessing markets in terms of the business opportunity, the complexity of the customer environment, and the costs/risks associated with market entry
- Perform regular launch readiness assessments in each of the countries at specific periods before launch
- Optimise the launch sequence and timing to maximise the patent exclusivity in each market
- Foster collaborative and productive in-licensing and co-marketing agreements
- Enhance the level of communication between corporate and affiliate staff
- Define clear roles and responsibilities between corporate, affiliates, and in-licensing/co-marketing partners, whilst enhancing the communication between these players
- Proactively integrate opinion leaders into the development of the strategy
- The benefits of a successful launch depend on the chosen strategy. Usually, the primary benefit is to maximise the NPV of the brand throughout the brand’s entire lifecycle, whilst in other situations it may be more important to maximise sales and/or the value of the brand. Another approach may be to focus on the outcome of the treatment to patients, in order to demonstrate value to payers, thus justifying a premium price and/or above average brand penetration.