Three years of IJPHM: review and reflection

Citation

Mukherjee, A. (2009), "Three years of IJPHM: review and reflection", International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing, Vol. 3 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijphm.2009.32403daa.001

Three years of IJPHM: review and reflection

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing, Volume 3, Issue 4

The International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing (IJPHM) completes three years at a time when healthcare is one of the most discussed global concerns. The looming H1N1 flu pandemic and the public health challenges involved in containing this flu have attracted the attention of global leaders, media and researchers. Healthcare is also lately the most important debate in the USA with passionate reactions on both sides to President Obama's proposed plans for comprehensive healthcare reforms. The current global economic environment is surrounded by signs of despair and recession. However, it is possible to see important opportunities for evolution of healthcare systems in the new market and competitive landscapes being created around us. Research in healthcare marketing and management is being fuelled by such interesting developments in this field.

I devote this editorial to a review of the last year for the journal, and a reflection of its many opportunities and challenges. IJPHM has succeeded in publishing relevant and rigorous research on important issues concerning pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing. The journal has attracted the attention of leading scholars in multiple disciplines and has attained both quality and quantity benchmarks in manuscript submissions.

Articles published in IJPHM in 2009 were almost evenly split between pharmaceutical-focus (54.17 per cent) and healthcare-focus (45.83 per cent). The 24 articles published in 2009 can be classified into research paper (66.67 per cent), book review (16.67 per cent), case study (8.33 per cent), view point (4.17 per cent) and conceptual paper (4.17 per cent). There has also been a good mix of articles authored by one author (45.83 per cent), two authors (20.83 per cent), three authors (25 per cent) and four authors (8.33 per cent).

The international nature of the published articles has grown in 2009 compared to the previous years. As many as nine countries are represented in the country affiliation-of-author mix: the USA (55.32 per cent), Pakistan (12.77 per cent), Switzerland, UK (8.51 per cent each), Australia (6.38 per cent) and finally Canada, Mexico, New Zealand and United Arab Emirates (2.13 per cent each). About 60 per cent of the articles focus on data from the USA, while the rest comes from Australia, Pakistan (10 per cent each), Central America, Germany, Switzerland and the UK (5 per cent each). Of course, there is more work to be done in this regard. I hope to receive more publishable manuscripts from outside the USA in the coming years. Further, 40.91 per cent of the editorial board members come from outside the USA.

Healthcare researchers publishing in IJPHM come from several disciplines. It gives me a great pleasure to report that the journal is increasingly becoming interdisciplinary with regard to its readership as well as authorship. Just 50 per cent of the authors in 2009 came from marketing departments. The other disciplines represented by the authors in 2009 were: quality and technology (13.64 per cent), finance and economics (11.36 per cent), ophthalmology (4.55 per cent) and accounting, clinical pharmacy, e-business, health service administration, information, health policy, media arts and science, nursing, and operations management (2.13 per cent each). Also, there was a good mix of scholarly as well as practice-oriented articles. To compare these numbers with those of 2007 and 2008, please read my editorials in the final issues of Volumes 1 and 2 (Mukherjee, 2007, 2008).

This journal issue presents five new articles which offer some interesting insights and contributions to our understanding of important issues surrounding pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing. Three of the five articles focus on pharmaceutical supply chain issues. Thani Jambulingam, Ravi Kathuria and John R. Nevin, in their article “How fairness garners loyalty in the pharmaceutical supply chain: role of trust in the wholesaler-pharmacy relationship”, investigate how fairness garners loyalty by breeding trust in the pharmaceutical wholesaler-pharmacy relationship. Using data from 156 retail pharmacies on their relationship with the pharmaceutical wholesalers, the authors contend that both procedural and distributive aspects of fairness are important on the part of pharmaceutical wholesalers as perceived by the pharmacies. This paper contributes in both theoretical and practical terms to the emerging literature on trust formation and loyalty in business-to-business relationships.

The second article titled “The relevance of marketing activities in the Swiss prescription drugs market: two empirical qualitative studies” by Michael Stros, Juerg Hari and John Marriott identifies the most relevant marketing instruments for prescription drug marketing in Switzerland. A combination of focus group and Delphi methodologies are applied to rank the essential marketing success factors. The authors recommend that prescription drug marketers communicate efficacy and safety by building relationships with opinion leaders through personal selling. Other success factors in the Swiss market include distribution of prescription via sales channels such as hospitals and physicians, and reimbursement of the product by health insurance.

In “Diffusion of videos on US hospital web sites”, Edgar Huang examines the extent to which US hospitals use videos on their web sites for marketing purposes. Adoption of new media, particularly in the Web 2.0 environment, is critical to healthcare marketing. Managerial implications are provided based on a content analysis of 6,456 US hospital web sites. Edgar Huang finds that while US hospitals generally use videos on their web sites, they need to better learn how to harness the power of videos for effective marketing and positioning.

Research on total quality management (TQM) implementation in pharmaceutical supply chains is rare. The fourth article by Muhammad Usman Awan, Abdul Raouf, Niaz Ahmad and Leigh Sparks, titled “Total quality management in developing countries: a case of pharmaceutical wholesale distribution in Pakistan” explores the critical success factors of TQM in pharmaceutical wholesale distribution companies. Survey responses reveal that while the pharmaceutical wholesale distribution companies need to focus on process design in shaping TQM, top management support is also a critical TQM success factor.

The final article by John Hamilton, titled “Building a targeted pharmacy customer engagement approach” adopts a “social value network” approach to elucidate the pathways that can enhance pharmacy-to-customer engagements. Structural equation modelling is used on survey data collected from Australian pharmacies.

We conclude with a review by Kabir C. Sen of the book The Politics of Health Legislation: An Economic Perspective (Third Edition) authored by Paul J. Feldstein.

The year 2009 has been a productive year for this very important journal. IJPHM is now the premier mainstream scholarly journal in pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing. The number of submissions has grown rapidly in the past year, as have been the article downloads and the citations. IJPHM articles appear full-text in ABI-Inform (ProQuest) and Emerald Management Plus. The journal has been included in Elsevier's Scopus citation database and its listing in Cabells and Inspec ensure that IJPHM articles enjoy unparalleled readership.

The end of another volume is an appropriate time to extend my sincere gratitude and thanks to the many scholars who have undertaken reviews of manuscripts submitted to the journal. Obviously, a journal is only as good as the quality of its review process. The value of the review process both to IJPHM and to the many authors who have benefitted from the comments and guidance provided is enormous. Over the next year, the objective of the Editorial Board of IJPHM will be to broaden the range of accepted articles thus addressing emerging and challenging themes. We are also open to offers of special issues on such themes. We will encourage publication of high-impact articles that reflect the cutting edge of pharmaceutical and healthcare research. At the same time, in the coming year, we at IJPHM look forward to receiving submissions that will be increasingly relevant to a wider range of practitioners. The opportunity to achieve enhanced relevance for our discipline is considerable and should not be missed out in the context of the current healthcare reform debate.

Avinandan Mukherjee

Selected IJPHM Reviewers for 2007-2009

Syed Saad Andaleeb, Pennsylvania State University, Erie, USANicholas Ashill, Victoria University of Wellington, New ZealandSubir Bandopadhyay, Indiana University Northwest, USAJ.P. Benya, Columbia University, USANorman V. Carroll, Virginia Commonwealth University, USAJanet Carruthers, Victoria University, New ZealandAshish Chandra, Marshall University, USAPatrali Chatterjee, Montclair State University, USAJunsong Chen, China Europe International Business School, ChinaAndrew Ching, University of Toronto, CanadaChristopher Clark, Macquarie University, AustraliaGerry Cleaves, Fairleigh Dickinson University, USAAlberto Coustasse, Marshall University, USARoger Durand, University of Houston – Clear Lake, USAIke Ekeledo, Montclair State University, USAChristine Ennew, Nottingham University, UKMarianna Fotaki, Manchester Business School, UKScott Friend, Georgia State University, USAStephen J. Gould, Baruch College, CUNY, USAMahmud Hassan, Rutgers University, USAAngela Hausman, Xavier University, USAHong Wei He, University of East Anglia, UKAnurag Hingorani, UTS, Sydney, AustraliaGillian Hogg, Strathclyde Business School, UKSharan Jagpal, Rutgers – The State University of New Jersey, USAAbhinandan Jain, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, IndiaPer Jenster, China Europe International Business School, ChinaJill Jesson, Aston Business School, UKJoby John, Bentley College, USAG.K. Kalyanaram, GK Associates, New York, USAGregory Katz-Benichou, ESSEC, FranceMark J. Kay, Montclair State University, USANeeru Malhotra, Aston Business School, UKJohn McGinnis, Montclair State University, USARam Misra, Montclair State University, USASantanu Mitra, Montclair State University, USAHiroshi Nakamura, Keio Business School, JapanVivek Natarajan, Lamar University, USAPrithwiraj Nath, Nottingham University, UKPrathap Oburai, IIM Ahmedabad, IndiaAhmet “Ozzie” Ozturk, Marshall University School of Medicine, USAMary Beth Pinto, Pennsylvania State University, USAManuel Pontes, Rowan University, USALuis San Vicente Portes, Montclair State University, USAC.V. Priporas, University Macedonia, GreeceSamuel Rabino, Northeastern University, USAP.S. Raju, University of Louisville, USAP.M. Rao, Long Island University, USAMichel Rod, Victoria University of Wellington, New ZealandPaul Scipione, State University of New York, Geneseo, USAJulie Z. Sneath, University of South Alabama, USAG. Shainesh, IIM Bangalore, IndiaDaniel Simonet, Nanyang Technological University, SingaporeRamendra Singh, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, IndiaEugene Sivadas, University of Washington, Tacoma, USAMickey Skiba, Monmouth University, USADeborah Spake, University of South Alabama, USAHan Srinivasan, University of Connecticut, USAGeorge Stone, North Carolina A&T State University, USADilaver Tengilimoglu, Gazi University, TurkeyBill Trombetta, Saint Joseph's University, USAMuhammad Usman Awan, University of the Punjab, Lahore, PakistanYawei Wang, Montclair State University, USADaniel West, University of Scranton, USASue Weston, Montclair State University, USAJudy Zolkiewski, Manchester Business School, UKNashat Zuraikat, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA