Correspondence: Brian D. Smith, Pragmedic Limited, 6, Whetstone Close, Welwyn, Hertfordshire, AL6 0QW, United Kingdom. E-mail: Brian.smith@pragmedic.com

¹is a visiting research fellow in the Marketing and Strategy Research Unit of the Open University Business School, Milton Keynes, UK. He also runs Pragmedic (www.pragmedic.com), a specialist strategy consultancy and is the editor of the Journal of Medical Marketing.

Received 24 August 2009; Revised 24 August 2009; Published online 18 September 2009.

Abstract

Opinion leadership is a well-defined concept that underpins much marketing practice in the pharmaceutical and other industries. Likely changes in that sector, consequences of its industry life cycle, are anticipated to make key opinion leader (KOL) management more important still. Despite this, little is known about the scope of KOL management processes in pharmaceutical companies or the trends that those processes may follow in response to industry changes. This article presents the findings of an exploratory, qualitative study involving 18 pharmaceutical company executives with responsibility for KOL management. It suggests that an enhanced, formalised, integrated and IT-enabled model of KOL management will evolve and that many leading companies have extant plans to realise such an approach.