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This study investigated how consumers' confidence in medicine and health information seeking and usage could be related to purchase intentions and satisfaction.

A panel of 18 food supplements consumers were interviewed using soft laddering. Qualitative data were coded and used to develop a structured survey. Participants (N = 363) were recruited on a voluntary basis among the customers of an Italian company in this sector. Hypotheses were tested by linear regressions and generalized models.

Results showed that consumers' confidence in medicine interacted with health information seeking and usage influencing both purchase intention and satisfaction. Consumers with high confidence behave differently from those with low confidence.

The authors used a sample based on one company's customer base.

Companies should segment their customers based on their level of confidence in medicine and adopt different marketing strategies for different segments.

A broader knowledge of consumers' attitudes towards food supplements and medicines can improve the public policies aimed at increasing quality of life.

From a theoretical viewpoint, findings suggest to consider consumers' confidence in medicine along with other subjective and contextual variables in socio-cognitive models aimed at explaining food supplements' consumer behavior. From a marketing viewpoint, results suggest to consider confidence in medicine as a precious variable in segmentation strategies. While some communication strategies are valid for all customers (i.e. using experts as advisors, using scientific contents in ads), others (i.e. relying on the advice of trustworthy people, explaining the consequences of consumption) were proved to have different impact on consumers depending on their degree of confidence in medicine.

The past few years have seen the emergence of a research literature dedicated to defining and understanding trust in physicians. Much of this research, however, focuses on a narrow set of explanations for the generation of physician trust. The purpose of this chapter is to expand on research by introducing new ideas to the study of physician trust. Employing data from the 1998 General Social Survey, the chapter shows that social resources, vulnerability in finances and in perceptions about the end of life, and exposure to unstable environments all are fairly consistent predictors of physician trust.

Pharmaceutical marketing, brand protection.

It could be used with the pharmaceutical marketing students and MBA students for analysing counterfeit medicines' menace in developing countries and positioning of a disruptive technology. The case could be used for marketing consultants, Brand managers and executive development programmes to explore issues such as protecting brands through technology, pharmaceutical packaging marketing, competitiveness of counterfeit drugs, global harmonisation.

Against the backdrop of rising menace of counterfeit drugs in developing countries, the case talks in particular about an innovative pharmaceutical packaging company. The company has developed a unique security technology called non-ClonableID™ which can enable products to be authenticated throughout the supply chain, thus protecting brands and preventing misuse. Despite a promising technology, it poses challenges regarding its adoption and commercial success.

Counterfeiting as an inevitable result of Globalization has become a global nuisance and has to be dealt at global level. Brand protection could be one of the lowest cost tools for pharmaceutical companies to restore public confidence in their products and themselves. While all methods for anti-counterfeiting are known to have short lives the menace still must be dealt with. For this, companies need to deploy anti-counterfeiting strategies that set up various layers of security.

Teaching note.

This paper aims to examine the development of Chinese medicine in Hong Kong and argues that Chinese medicine is not a mere healing practice but a discursive practice against its unique institutional context.

Reviewing the medical history in the colonial and post-colonial era, this paper delineates the dynamics between Chinese medicine and Western medicine, and the discursive shaping of Chinese medicine in Hong Kong.

While Chinese medicine in post-colonial Hong Kong is modernizing itself from a traditional medicine to the scientific Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), it partakes in the decolonization and nationalization project and is geared towards the standardized TCM.

This paper proposed a critical cultural perspective in studying the discursive formation of Chinese medicine in Hong Kong.

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of what influences consumers’ choice of mandatory prescribed drugs, by looking with more detail to the substitution of branded drugs by generics. Specifically, this research looks at three factors that can influence this decision, namely, participative decision-making, perceived risk and price consciousness, within the recent changes introduced in the Portuguese pharmaceutical market by new legislation.

A cross-sectional study was conducted, using a self-administered questionnaire, to survey a sample of consumers/patients that visited a doctor and were prescribed some kind of drug. Data were treated using factor analysis for dimensionality reduction purposes and regression analysis to test the main hypothesis.

The results show that participative decision-making has no impact on purchase decision of generics, while perceived risk and price consciousness show a predictive power regarding purchase intention of generic drugs.

Although the results are only applicable to the Portuguese context, it draws important conclusions regarding consumers’ behaviour when choosing between branded and generic drugs.

Knowing what influences consumers’ choices of generic drugs contributes to tune marketing strategies and actions. For public institutions, this paper offers insights on how to adapt public policies.

This paper is valuable because it is the first to look at the Portuguese pharmaceutical market from a consumer behaviour perspective since new legislation was set up.

The main purpose of this paper is to identify and rank various barriers to pharmacovigilance (PV) in context of emerging economies and examine their interrelationships using the interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approach. The result is a model that offers insights about how to achieve rational and safe use of medicines and ensure patient safety as realized through robust national PV systems.

The paper develops a model to analyze the interactions among PV barriers using the ISM approach. Based on input from clinical and medical product development experts, PV barriers in emerging economies were identified and reviewed. The hierarchical interrelationships among these PV barriers were analyzed in context of their driving/dependence powers.

Findings of the study identify key PV barriers—lack of resources/infrastructure, weak legislation, unfair burden of disease, lack of PV capacity, training, and enforcement authority—that drive, or strongly influence, other barriers and thwart implementation of robust national PV systems in emerging economies. Pharmaceutical industry factors were PV barriers that were identified as autonomous, implying their relative disconnection from other barriers, and patient PV practices barrier was strongly dependent on other barriers.

The paper offers policy- and decision-makers alike with a framework to support further research into interdependencies among key PV barriers in emerging economies. It can serve as an impetus for further research with potential to broadening the understanding of how and why PV systems may be rendered ineffective. Future studies can be planned to apply the ISM approach to study PV barriers in the context of developed economies and draw lessons and implications for policy- and decision-makers by contrasting results from these studies.

This paper contributes to the understanding of the multifaceted nature of PV and its barriers. The proposed approach gives public health decision-makers a better comprehension of driver PV barriers that have most influence on others versus dependent PV barriers, which are most influenced by others. Also, knowledge, attitude and practices of patients and caregivers can also be critical PV barriers in emerging economies. This information can be instrumental for public health policymakers, government entities, and health/PV practitioners to identify the PV barriers that they should prioritize for improvement and how to manage trade-offs between these barriers.

PV barriers in emerging economies, as compared to developed economies, are inherently different and need to be examined in their specific context. The hierarchical ISM model suggests that resources and regulation initiatives by governments in emerging economies lead to through informed/enabled pharmaceutical supply chain players and eventually drive PV-specific knowledge, attitude, and practice outcomes improvements across their populace.

This paper highlights the deployment of ISM approach as a health policy decision support tool in the identifying and ranking barriers to effective PV systems in emerging economies, in terms of their contextual relationships, to achieve a better understanding as to how these interrelationships can affect national PV system outcomes.

This study aims to assess the fraud cases, factors and control measures of financial fraud in the drug industry with evidence from Ghana. Drug industry and pharmaceutical are the same, and they are used interchangeably in this study.

Data from questionnaires were collected from 412 manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers of the drug industry. Data were presented and analysed with descriptive statistics and probit regression.

Results show that, in general, stealing of drugs, stealing of cash, usage of fake cheques, falsified documents and dubious accounting practices are some of the fraud cases in the industry. Factors such as gender, educational level, religious beliefs, regulatory 7measures, pressure, rationalization and opportunities influence financial fraud in the drug industry. Control measures such as thorough assessment of products, regular review of fraud policies, installation of fraud-detection software and effective internal systems could reduce the menace.

The paper addresses a number of theoretical and systemic issues on financial fraud in the drug industry but with limited specific quantitative data or calculations as well as limited sample size. Further studies could offer a more quantitative approach with a larger sample size in an attempt, for instance, to estimate the financial costs of financial fraud to the drug industry.

This paper openly tackles various attempted frauds and financial malfeasances from stakeholder perspectives in the drug industry. Practical measures have been given to tackle the consequences of the menace.

This paper is geared towards providing valuable learning points for stakeholders in the drug industry to handle daily operations to assist them in detecting and preventing similar occurrence of financial fraud.

This contribution discusses how multinational firms could serve poorer consumers in developed regions like Europe and through which business models, beyond the traditional corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions. MNEs have still limited capacity to address poverty in developed countries, notwithstanding some experience they have matured in developing markets and the striking figures of rising poverty in Europe and the United States. This research focuses on a specific issue: the role of MNEs in addressing poverty in developed markets, either leveraging on their previous expertise gained in developing countries or designing novel ad hoc solutions. The capacity of Western multinationals to tackle effectively the challenge of profitably doing business at the base of the pyramid (BoP) represents a controversial issue in literature and an intriguing topic for international business studies. The empirical research is based on three case studies. The companies have already gained experience in targeting BoP markets in developing countries. They are analyzed in order to understand better their approaches and their applicability in Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the main reasons driving the anti‐vaccination movement (AVM) and relate similarities and differences of the AVM with the anti‐consumption of other products.

The paper conducts thematic analysis of various online sources, including medical journals, blogs, science articles and business/social science databases.

First, the paper outlines the main themes (religion, freedom of choice, risk, and uncertainty) driving the anti‐consumption of vaccines. Second, it explains why the AVM is a unique and paradoxical form of anti‐consumption. Third, although much anti‐consumption behaviour is motivated by the belief that rejecting certain acts of consumption may be beneficial to society, the paper uses the AVM to show that not all anti‐consumption behavior has clear‐cut benefits for society.

While this is predominately a conceptual paper, a commentary on the AVM has never been attempted by business scholars. This is surprising since business scholars are able to bring a more impartial viewpoint to the debate than both the medical establishment and proponents of natural therapy. As this paper is not associated with medical interests, nor the AVM, the focus is on the welfare of consumers and as such, a more detached perspective may be useful in this controversial area.

Since the AVM debate is filled with much uncertainty, the paper recommends a more balanced/respectful approach by the medical community, pro‐vaccinators and the AVM.

Unlike previous work in the area, this research intersects commercial, societal, and medical interests. It also highlights AVM as an interesting case where large groups of people sharing similar anti‐consumption behaviours are actually incompatible with one another.

The mandatory withdrawal of almost 2,000 complementary and alternative medicines, manufactured under contract on behalf of multiple brand names, primarily in the Australian and New Zealand markets, provides an opportunity to examine the impact on sales levels and both brand and category loyalty of a major product confidence crisis. Sets out to deal with this issue

Focuses on the impact of the events surrounding the recall within both the Australian and New Zealand markets and links the events surrounding the recall with the scant international literature relating to brand management during crisis situations. Then reports on findings from an investigation of New Zealand consumer perceptions of the sector after the recall event.

The substantial impact on both category and brand loyalty in the face of prolonged non‐availability of some products is revealed, as is the lack of contingency planning across product supply and marketing communications dimensions. Concludes with recommendations for the future management of brands during such events.

Lessons that may be learned in relation to brand management during crisis situations are stressed, along with implications for cross‐border brand management.

The dynamics of the complementary and alternative medicines market have not been comprehensively researched. In addition, the extant literature regarding brand management during crisis situations is not extensive. This paper therefore makes a contribution towards the understanding of an under‐researched market sector and also the impact on brand management of major disruption to consumer confidence and product availability.