What are your Marketing related thoughts about the recent price hike in Daraprim that Turing Pharmaceuticals instituted and the response of Imprimis Pharmaceuticals, Inc.?
Turing Pharmaceuticals’ CEO, Martin Shkreli, has created a media circus with his controversial decision to purchase the rights to Daraprim and hike the price by 5000%.
The decision set off a couple of reactions; First, the media attention and public outcry has drawn negative attention to both Shkreli and Turing Pharmaceuticals. Second, the decision gave competitors an opportunity to step in and exploit the general public’s strong emotional reaction by offering an alternative drug.
The second opportunity created marketing opportunities. Imprimis Pharmaceuticals stepped in with an alternative drug to treat immune diseases in response to Daraprim’s price increase, generating positive press and boosting their image in the public eye. Whether or not this decision was based on altruistic intentions, the result is that Imprimis is the hero of the story, and as such, has an advantage it can use to market its products to the public. Imprimis’ CEO, Mark Baum, stated that the company would be ‘looking at all of these cases where the sole-source generic companies are jacking the price way up’ in order to create more generic compounded drugs (2015).
On the other hand, Turing Pharmaceuticals is in damage control as a result of Shkreli’s decision. He did lower the price of the medication in response to ‘the anger that was felt by some people’, but claimed dropping that the price drop would force him to cut jobs and “curtail research for lethal diseases” (2015).