CRM Approaches used by Multinational & Indian Pharmaceutical Companies: Comparative Perception of Stakeholders-Global Perspective & Indian Context

CRM is a business strategy directed to understand, anticipate and respond to the needs of an enterprise’s current and potential customers in order to grow the relationship value.’ CRM, as defined above by authoritative sources and CRM that is witnessed in the Pharma industry today are strikingly different in their objectives, techniques, methodology and end–results. Customer centricity has long been a guiding principle for many businesses. However, it is usually limited to marketing existing products with as strong a customer focus as possible. Corporate strategy remains basically product- centered. Customers typically have a fractured view of an enterprise.Although customer centricity has been propagated for years as a guiding principle for pharma companies, product centricity still dominates their marketing, sales and service activities. Customer orientation is mostly limited to support for customers’ needs during sales and after sales through customer-facing channels such as marketing, sales and service departments which are fast and accommodating but nevertheless isolated. Today's customers usually have more far-reaching requirements.