In an aggressively competitive market environment of today, the pharmaceutical companies need to concentrate on smaller cities and rural areas to increase sales of their products and newer strategies should be employed to maintain the sales without losing the ethical values, opined the pharma industry captains of Tamil Nadu.

The pharma leaders were participating in a panel discussion on ethical values in marketing organised by Indian Drug Manufacturers’ Association (IDMA), Tamil Nadu state board. The panel discussed the possibilities to improve the marketing without losing ethical values. All the panelists agreed that major changes are required in the current methods of working of medical representatives.

The theme of the day long summit about the business ethics was “Slow death or Re-birth of ethical marketing”. Speakers were of the view that the ethical values lost in marketing can be reclaimed as there are several  methods to increase the sales without influencing the prescribers through backdoors.

Advocating that ethical business practices are the backbone of healthy business, Dr Raja Smarta, managing director of Interlink Marketing Consultancy, Mumbai, said that in a highly competitive market dynamics, one tends to lose one’s balance due to pressures and compulsions from competitors. But, in such a competitive environment also, ethics can be upheld and followed in all kinds of selling, including selling of pharmaceutical products.

“Code of ethics has been always there in the market and it is still prevailing. Hence it cannot be said that it has been lost or slowly getting lost in today’s context. There are a few companies which are sticking to ethics and still growing. Organizational culture is an important aspect for maintaining ethics in any situation,” he said.

According to him doctors definitely have a role in the process of maintaining ethics when their focus is on patients rather than on the promotional methods applied by different pharma companies.

Dr Ruth D’ Souza, executive director of Interlink Marketing Consultancy who was one of the panelists in the discussion said it is time to change the concept  from ‘business focus should be on delivering value to the Stockholder’ to delivering value to all Stakeholders, which will cover environment, people, community as well as the owners/stockholders. She said there have been attempts globally to redefine the measure of business success to the triple bottom line concept (TBL) which is measured as Planet, People and Profit.

The seminar banded together three captains of Tamil Nadu pharma industry with unique experience of marketing to address the subject from different perspectives. The trio rose to the posts of MD levels from the profession of medical representatives, decades ago. One of them, S V Veeramani, now the vice-president of IDMA, said the ethical value of profession and business should not be eroded as the medical business is socially committed. He admitted that the promotion of products is not possible in a developed and competitive market mechanism without influencing the prescribers. This trend has brought down the image of pharmaceutical companies to a lower level, but, it has helped the society in several ways, he said.

The TN – IPA secretary, J Jayaseelan said this is time to redefine the concept of ethics because it confuses everybody today. The perception of ethics is now corporate based. “The aspect of social responsibility should be fostered by every corporate in their business and training to their staff. Instead of value system based marketing, we need value based marketing,” he said.

M Rajarathinam, chairman of IDMA Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry State Board while participating in the discussion said now the industry is recycling the lost ethics. In the changing and competitive market, everybody wants to travel on the road where traffic is less. He emphasized the need to have an ethical way for good marketing.