Question

Explain the difference between the push strategy and the pull strategy in the channel of distribution. How are they used with regards to the pharmaceutical industry today? Which approach seems to be used with greater frequency: push or pull? Why is this the case?

Answer 1

First, let me share difference between the push strategy and pull strategy in the channel of distribution,

Push Strategy	Pull Strategy
Here, products are pushed to the retailer or client or customer. We could see point of sale concept, where, products are stocked in the house of Retailer, Manufacturer hires representative to push products to the retailer’s shop or to the client’s hand.	Here, winning of customer happens through pull approach, that means customer selects the product as per their wish, We could promote advertising, word of mouth, social media marketing and email marketing, here, customer gets time and flexibility to know about the feature of product, they could chose the product as per their wish and buy the same at their time.

In pharmaceutical industry today, we could see Push Strategy in the channel of distribution, as, they hire representative, experts to push their products and they present their products to doctors and retailers, so, they can do stocking of the medicine products and they can sell such products to customer or suggest such products to customer.

According to my view, we should use Pull Strategy with greater frequency, as with this strategy, manufacturer or seller do marketing of their products, further, they consider various methods like advertising on news paper, TV, Website, word of mouths, social media marketing, email and mobile marketing, with such marketing, customer could gather knowledge and information of the products at their flexibility, later they could put their decision on whether they will buy such product or not. Pull strategy helps customer to pull the products from the market, it brings more satisfaction for the customers, hence organization could find greater winning with such strategy.