Pharmaceutical industry analysis is the empirical evaluation of the economic trends within the pharmaceutical industry. The main objective of a for-profit corporation within the pharmaceutical industry is to accumulate a substantial return on investment for the product that is being marketed, in which case industry analysis is very important. A pharmaceutical corporation might have internal staff members to undertake the analysis and research, or it might even hire an external consulting firm to conduct the analysis. Pharmaceutical industry analysis has utility for a number of areas, including companies who require market analysis for a new product launch.
Many of the largest pharmaceutical corporations generate vast sales revenues and large profit margins. Therefore, if a company is going to invest a large sum into a new product, pharmaceutical industry analysis is an essential practice. For this particular application of pharmaceutical industry analysis, one of the main constituent areas is comprehensive market research. If a company is considering the development and subsequent release of a new type of mental health drug, for example, it will require extensive analysis of the psychopharmacology pharmaceutical sector — the market concerned with drugs designed to treat mental health disorders. This could include acquiring data related to the global sales statistics of a particular drug in this market, and it might include analyzing current market trends.
Another application for pharmaceutical industry analysis is the analysis conducted by a centralized consulting firm. A company that specializes in conducting industry analysis in a number of markets will gather empirical and statistical information, globally and regionally, related to the industry in question, usually on an annual basis. This information will then be sold to other corporations or organizations. This analysis might be sold as a standard pre-written analysis, or the firm might receive a contract to conduct a custom-made pharmaceutical industry analysis project.
Governmental organizations might acquire or even engage in pharmaceutical industry analysis for the purpose of adding this information to a national statistics database. In terms of the national economy of any given government, if a particular business sector is making a large contributing to the gross domestic product of this country, the government in question will be interested in these statistics. Therefore, an intelligence researcher or an industry analyst will undertake the pharmaceutical industry analysis to acquire this statistical information.