The WaveData Team wanted to find an example of a parallel import appearing in the UK, it’s birth in competition with the UK brand, and it’s final demise once generics had hit the market.
We looked at all the different constituent molecules for which we had been able to collect parallel import information over the last 25 years. There were quite a large group of these, but we chose one that had very high numbers of market offers on price lists to dispensing doctors and pharmacies roughly in the middle of the 25 year period.
The molecule that caught our attention was Vardenafil, the generic name for Bayer’s Levitra which was first launched in the UK in 2003. We looked purely at the market penetration and share of voice, in other words how often was this parallel import added to supplier price lists each month.
We found that it first appeared as a parallel import in the UK in January 2005, which means that its PI free honeymoon lasted a couple of years. It was then pushed very hard by wholesalers and importers in 2005 and 2006, reaching a peak of 120 offers per month by July 2008. There was then a dramatic slump, such that it fell to just 11 offers a month by January 2009. There was some pick up after this with about 30 offers a month in the period between 2009 and generic launch in January 2019.
The last time we saw any evidence of market offers for parallel imported Levitra was in November 2022, which means that it took almost 3 years for the parallel import to die in the face of competition with the generic.
We could’ve broken this down to the individual packs and strengths but refrained from throwing ourselves into this level of detail to try and make the big picture understandable. Some brands do last a lot longer with commercial brand equalisation support.