An analysis of 188 generic products, their launch prices and the final prices today shows that there is a relationship between the high value products and high price declines. Wavedata have previously found that a strong relationship between price decline and the original brand prices does exist. In the case of generics, there may be other factors that reduce the strength of this relationship. For example, a high value generic may have sister products containing the same ingredient, but at lower strengths, watering down the effect. Another factor is that a high priced product may have a small market share, or be in a declining market with fewer clinicians prescribing it. Overall though it does suggest that if a product is launched on day 1 with a high price, it will eventually attract many other license holders to compete for a declining reward. The converse example of a low value product, where license holders are able to nurture a low return niche does appear to be possible. Wavedata collect these prices from pharmacies and dispensing doctors, and have been doing so since the year 2000. Each month over 100,000 prices are collected for generics, parallel imports, UK brands and devices, and this timely information is added to the Wavedata Live system every 15 minutes, and the historical information is used to produce analyses like these.
Do high unit value generic products decline more than low value generics?
