The growing body of research in pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing

Citation

Mukherjee, A. (2008), "The growing body of research in pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing", International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing, Vol. 2 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijphm.2008.32402caa.001

The growing body of research in pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing, Volume 2, Issue 3

Of late, there is a perceptible growth in research interest in pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing. A host of journals are publishing special issues on healthcare and pharmaceutical marketing. Having attended the Marketing Science Conference over the past nine years in succession, I have been happy to find a generally growing trend with a higher number of papers devoted to this area in each year’s conference compared to the previous years. There are three reasons for this:

1. 1.

   availability of data for research;

2. 2.

   availability of funding for research; and

3. 3.

   the growing criticality of the sector to national and global economies, and the resulting societal impact.

However, I believe the main problem with research in this area is tunnel vision. There is still a reluctance (albeit an understandable one) to move towards a panoptic view of the area with most authors perceiving the area through their own lenses. Most research on pharma marketing tends to ignore the broader healthcare systems within which the pharma market operates. Similarly, researchers from marketing tend to ignore the findings from pharmacy and medical literatures and vice versa. That is exactly the expected contribution of this journal. The International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing (IJPHM) strives to bridge these gaps and encourage a holistic and eclectic exchange of ideas and thoughts in this ever-important area of research. Papers accepted in this issue have come from medical, pharmacy, and business schools, and from the pharmaceutical industry. Further, authors from the USA, Japan, and Australia have published in this issue.

I also appeared on the Meet the Editors panel in the BHAA conference in Chicago and promoted the journal to an interdisciplinary audience. More recently, the Journal of Pharmaceutical Marketing and Management (JPMM) was discontinued by its publisher (Haworth Press), leading to a flow of manuscripts from that journal to IJPHM. We at Emerald and IJPHM have welcomed these submissions, got Mick Kolassa (Editor of JPMM) on our Editorial Board, and expedited our decision for papers accepted by JPMM.

This issue presents an interesting ensemble of research articles that add to our theoretical/methodological understanding as well as our practical understanding of the discipline. Ethics is a hot-button topic in the US pharmaceutical industry. This journal issue starts with a study conducted by Sillup and Porth on media coverage of ethical issues in the pharmaceutical industry as reported in leading US newspapers. Analyzing both the headlines and the full text of each relevant article, the authors categorized the headlines into positive, negative or neutral, and categorized the full text based on the dominant ethical issue. The ethical issues identified were also compared with those highlighted by PhRMA, the industry’s trade association. Three hundred and seventy-six front page articles and editorials were selected from five leading US newspapers audited over two years. Some of the major ethical issues identified are: drug safety, pricing, data disclosure, and reporting requirements, etc.

Ryerson, in the second paper, makes an interesting contribution by introducing the concept of specific self-efficacy of pharmaceutical sales representatives as a better predictor of their performance, as opposed to general self-efficacy. Based on data collected from a sample of 110 sales reps, Ryerson demonstrates that the self-efficacy of behaviours such as getting, giving, using, and planning are positively correlated with performance. However, while increased self-efficacy of behaviours reduces performance, increase in the behaviours improves sales performance.

The contribution of the third paper is largely methodological. Lim, Kirikoshi, and Okano apply genetic algorithm-partial least squares (GA-PLS) to model the effects of physician-directed promotions in the pharmaceutical industry. A dataset on the US antibiotic market is used to understand the critical spending variables that influence physician’s prescribing behaviour. GA-PLS is shown as a robust methodology, with GA used as a variable-selecting tool and PLS employed for correlating these variables (11 variables such as calls, cost per contact, journal and spending, samples, etc.) with prescription volume. Practical implications for pharmaceutical managers are discussed.

Applying a health economics perspective, Whitty, Rundle-Thiele, and Scuffham, in the fourth paper, report a discrete choice experiment to evaluate public preferences for allocating resources for pharmaceuticals. Their findings are based on two samples of Australian adults – one pilot study sample of 19 respondents with forced choice and a main study sample of 161 respondents with an opt-out option. Their data analysis using multinomial logit show that the Australian public consider three factors most critical for pharmaceutical funding: quality of life after treatment, survival after treatment, and chance of success associated with a new pharmaceutical. This research offers important insights to pharma marketers on the desired claims that would appeal to the Australian public and increase funding possibilities.

Electronic detailing of pharmaceuticals, mainly in interactive (virtual) and video forms, is increasingly exerting a greater influence on physicians’ prescription behaviour. The final paper by Alkhateeb and Doucette is a timely review of the burgeoning literature on e-detailing of pharmaceuticals to physicians. The authors identify convenience, quality of information, and incentives as factors influencing adoption of e-detailing, mainly among physicians who are more likely to be residents, younger in age, practising primary care in solo practice and in rural areas.

As always, I would like to thank and congratulate the authors of the papers included in this issue and in the journal so far for their high quality contributions. All papers included in this journal are subjected to a rigorous double blind scholarly review process by internationally renowned experts in the field. Special words of gratitude are also extended to all the editorial board members and the ad hoc reviewers for their contribution towards ensuring the highest quality and impact for the journal. Finally, I must thank my editorial assistant Stacy Lin for her diligent and continuous effort to ensure that each paper has all required information, is free from referencing errors and is formatted exactly as per the journal specifications.

Avinandan Mukherjee