Challenges in Building a Marketing Communication Platform within the Pharmaceutical Industry in Sweden - A Case Study

Abstract: This thesis aims to investigate the main challenges and how they are overcome, when pharmaceutical companies based in Sweden go about in creating a marketing communications platform. By conducting interviews, and making observations, with a pharmaceutical company in Sweden and a marketing consulting company, hired by the pharmaceutical company, we find that there are internal and external challenges in this task. External challenges are e.g. regulations concerning the marketing of drugs and few meeting opportunities with physicians and internal challenges are e.g. departments not working as a united force and inefficiencies associated with creating a marketing communications platform. Thus, we conclude that to help overcome these issues, pharmaceutical companies need to create a communication system, which is more integrated and used in synergy by all departments within the company. Furthermore, it is important that the pharmaceutical company exploits all the tools in the Integrated Marketing Communications framework in order to create effectiveness, which will help working around regulations. The results add valuable insight to the limited literature within the framework and propose practical implications to the industry as a whole when creating a marketing communications platform.