How Healthcare Professionals view Pharmaceutical Companies in Japan

Nikkei Research evaluated the overall brand strength of pharmaceutical companies in Japan. The survey collected answers from physicians who specialize in lung cancer, breast cancer or blood cancer. For each category of cancer, well-known brands from both domestic and foreign companies were compared.

Table 1. List of brands compared in the survey

Blood Cancer	Breast Cancer	Lung Cancer
AbbVie	AstraZeneca	AstraZeneca
Astellas Amgen	Bristol Myers Squibb	Boehringer Ingelheim
Bristol Myers Squibb	Chugai	Bristol Myers Squibb
Celgene	Daiichi Sankyo	Chugai
Chugai	Eisai	Daiichi Sankyo
Daiichi Sankyo	Eli Lilly	Eli Lilly
Janssen	Janssen Pharma	MSD
MSD	Novartis Pharma	Novartis
Novartis	Pfizer	Ono
Ono	Taiho Pharmaceutical	Pfizer
Pfizer
Takeda

*List in alphabetical order.

The Nikkei Research's "Medical Brand Index", showing overall brand strength, is derived from five important factors: "Necessity", "Superiority", "Partnership" (Between doctors and medical representatives (MRs) regarding patient treatment), "Reliability" and "Likeliness to Recommend".

In addition to the five factors noted above, the following questions were also asked, and the answers were collected. The resulting information provided a deeper understanding of background details.

・Awareness
・Years of relationship with the companies
・Years of use of the companies' products
・Frequency of information provision by the MRs
・Sympathy for the companies' policies and activities
・How you came to know about the companies
・Impressions of the companies and their products
・Satisfaction with the MRs
・Intentions of the same MRs to continue serving
・Overall satisfaction with the products
・Satisfaction with the companies
・Dependence on the companies

Several interesting insights were derived from the study. For one company, it was shown that satisfaction is not achieved through frequent information provision but rather is a matter of the efficiency with which MRs provide information. The study also demonstrated the importance of differentiation and what doctors want from pharmaceutical companies.

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