Pharmaceutical innovation and market share: evidence from a generic market

Purpose Pharmaceutical market value in Iran exceeded to more than US$4bn in 2013, indicating annually over 20 per cent growth. In the past decades, Iranian pharmaceutical industry was supported by government policies, namely, generic substitution, import limitation and local production support; however, the local pharmaceutical manufacturer’s market share in value has been decreased gradually. This study aims to provide historical data on Iran pharmaceutical market to show the importance of new product development to attain greater market share and tries to motivate the pharmaceutical industry located in developing countries to develop more innovative medicines. Design/methodology/approach This is a descriptive cross-sectional study that investigates the Iranian pharmaceutical market by focusing on new products over a five-year period (2009-2014), and that was augmented by an expert panel to rank subjectively firms’ performance indicators to shed light on the importance of new product development to firms’ performance. Findings The expert panel results find out that new product development is one of the most important “result indicators” for Iranian pharmaceutical companies. Historically, in line with the experts’ opinion on the new product development, the Iranian pharmaceutical industry has shown its capability to develop new medicines by developing 3,095 new products (mostly new-to-firm) across about 100 firms. Despite this fact, the share of local manufacturers in new medicines’ market decreased from 52 per cent at the beginning of studied period to 24 per cent at the end, and the gap between the unit value of imported and domestically produced medicines has been significantly increased due to low-innovative medicines locally produced. Research limitations/implications This research was challenged with limitations such as lack of reliable published data on new medicines in the Iran pharmaceutical market. Practical implications This study highlights the fact that developing more innovative products in the generic pharmaceutical industry such as Iran can grant its market share. Originality/value This is an original study that shows the effect of innovative product development on market share through historical data.