Emergence of a Pharmaceutical Drug as New Entrant in a Category: Ex Ante Diffusion of Innovation Modeling and Forecasting

The emergence of a product, new entrant in a category, is a relevant issue in marketing strategy implementation. Usually, diffusion of innovation models analyze single products or services when they are active in the marketplace for a sufficient time interval as compared with related life cycles. If product sales data are available since the launch, robust inference and prediction for each item may be efficiently performed. More complex and risky is the prediction with no specific data for a new entrant. This paper analyzes the temporal sequence of observed life cycles in a category to assess and estimate ex ante the dynamics that characterize the launch time and the future features of a new entrant. A case study is examined: the introduction in Italy of a new pharmaceutical drug within the category of treatments for acid-related disorders based on the ranitidine