A Decision Support System for Developing Marketing Strategy in Pharmaceutical Industry

Promotion activities in the pharmaceutical industry are critical both for informing physicians about innovations and for pharmaceutical companies to increase the demand for their products. For this reason, it is important to benefit from promotional activities, which are an important cost item, most effectively in both informing physicians and increasing the demand. On the other hand, marketing activities to the end user in the pharmaceutical industry are restricted by regulations in many countries. Due to this obligation brought by the laws, the planning of marketing activities in the pharmaceutical industry may differ from other industries. This study aims to develop a fuzzy rule-based system to segment physicians according to their promotion preferences and develop promotion strategies suitable for each segment to increase the effectiveness of promotional activities. As a result of the study, nine different promotion strategies are developed in line with the promotion preferences of the physicians. In the pilot study where the strategies are applied, it is noticed that the proposed decision support system significantly increased sales.