Buchhaltung und Marketing

Influence of Pharmaceutical Marketing on Prescription Behavior of Physicians: A Cross-sectional Study in Bangladesh

Abstract

Biswas K and Ferdousy UK

Pharmaceutical marketing is quite different from general marketing as the decision makers are the physicians (secondary customers) not the patients (original consumers), thus maximum marketing strategies are designed on focusing to the physicians. This study explores the influence of pharmaceutical marketing on the prescription practices of physicians in Bangladesh. A self-administered questionnaire was applied to collect data from 500 physicians. The effectiveness of the promotional strategies on prescription behavior was marked in a seven point Likert scale. Pharmaceutical marketing influences the choice of the brands by physicians. The main theme of the study is to develop a framework to find out the impact of different kinds of promotional tools offered by pharmaceutical companies on the prescription of physicians. In this study it was found that prescription behavior of a physician greatly influenced by pharmaceutical marketing. Among all promotional strategies “public relation”was found most effective strategy that influence a physician’s prescription remarkably while “advertisement” of the pharmaceutical products in a journal or other printing object attracts the physician concentration least.