The business model for bringing lucrative new pharmaceutical drugs to market includes very robust marketing budgets, and 9 out of 10 pharmaceutical companies spend more on advertising than they do on research. And why not? Americans spend an average of $1000 per person, per year on pharmaceutical drugs, and the effort to capture these dollars is leading more companies to fast track or even fabricate the research involved in bringing a new drug to market.
Here’s a look at how much the largest pharmaceutical companies spent on marketing vs. expenditures on research and development in 2013: