Customer centricity as a key to success for pharma

In summary, it has to be stated that the pharmaceutical industry is facing fundamental challenges. A signifi cant number of expiring patents is accompanied by a less promising research pipeline. The health-care cost pressure is getting more intense, which favors the position of generics increasingly. Business models that have been implemented successfully for decades are not applicable anymore because of these circumstances. The orientation of pharmaceutical companies has to change dramatically. ^{1 - 3} Customer centricity offers a very promising approach that focuses all marketing activities and processes of the corporation on the customer, the physicians and the patients in the proper sense, the payors in a wider sense, and replenishes a strategic and long - termoriented component to the already existing CRM activities. ^{6 - 8} This enables a differentiated and EBIT(DA)-oriented market and customer approach with the support of a segmentation approach that fi ts to the relevant target groups. With the support of this foundation, a differentiated and segment-specifi c overall offering logic has to be developed, accompanied by a comprehensive change management process and the commitment of the top management to set the customer as the major control quantity within the corporation. The consistent implementation of the customer centricity approach enables sustainable differentiation of pharmaceutical companies for future competition.