What is World Pharmaceutical Industry

In this chapter, the authors analyze strategic global development trends and competitiveness in the world pharmaceutical industry. They find some most significant characteristics of the world pharmaceutical industry, which greatly influence the global development in this “high-tech” industrial sector. The global pharmaceutical industry has been consolidating over the past 30 years. According to the research, the main strategic reasons for the intensive consolidation processes in the world pharmaceutical industry include the following: lack of new products to drive sales growth, huge investments needed for R&D activities to develop new products, fast globalization processes of the global economy, global marketing and sales activities that need large investments, and changed structure of competitors created by M&A strategies and consolidation processes. The concentration process, which is still going on, has created many new phramaceutical players; however, some previously well-known pharmaceutical firms have disappeared from the global marketplace.