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States that although Japan’s pharmaceutical industry has succeeded in steadily advancing its total sales revenues in recent years, its market share of worldwide volume has actually retreated slightly. Its major competitor continues to be the USA, while its three top European rivals: Germany, France and Italy ‐ in combination ‐ have consistently outperformed Japan. Significantly, Japan remains the single largest recipient of US pharmaceutical exports with a surplus over imports of more than $500 billion. Discusses various findings based on survey results within Japan’s market structure. Posits that the US experience shows that successfully operating on the Japanese market requires considerable preparation, especially in the areas of distribution and promotion. Owing to the technical segmentation and endemic distribution system of the Japanese pharmaceutical industry, concludes that it is unlikely that the pharmaceutical industry in Japan will rise to dominate this industrial sector on a global basis as they have prevailed in others.

A key objective of the 5th Annual Pharmaceutical Congress “Marketing ROI for Pharma” conference was to illustrate how in the midst of a very turbulent environment, and with higher demand for pharmaceutical marketers to deliver bigger profits from increasingly smaller promotional budgets, there are a few critical decision areas that, if addressed appropriately, can help to deliver better return on investment (ROI). This commentary paper aims to provide a summary of what was discussed.

Given access to the conference presenters' original materials, the authors condensed the presentations into a summary article with reference to some recent academic work in the area.

The article summarises the presentations of a number of European pharmaceutical industry practitioners, healthcare professionals and government policy personnel in their assessments of the turbulent European pharmaceutical industry environment and the challenges associated with optimising ROI from promotional spending.

The entire paper summarises recent industry practice in Europe regarding how to optimise pharmaceutical ROI with respect to marketing activities and provides actual examples of how to do this.

Primarily targeting pharmaceutical industry practitioners, this paper provides a timely and thorough resource for those industry personnel charged with the mission of maximizing pharmaceutical marketing ROI.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate pharmaceutical market access (MA) and the interaction between the pharmaceutical company and other business and non-business actors (NBAs) involved in the MA of ethical drugs, to identify the main categories of actors, their role for MA and the content of the interaction, adopting an industrial marketing approach.

A qualitative interpretivist approach is adopted, with interviews as the primary data collection method: 36 interviews have been conducted with 16 key informants from the pharmaceutical industry.

The findings of this study reveal that (i) MA can be seen as a relational-driven activity with specific features owing to the highly regulated nature of the pharmaceutical industry, (ii) there is a multiplicity of business, and NBAs involved in the MA activities with whom pharmaceutical companies interact to acquire knowledge, legitimacy and make MA timely and effective, and (iii) the interaction with each category of actors has specific content.

This paper advances the debate on the marketing and management of pharmaceutical companies by emphasizing the importance of MA and the need to conceptualize it according to an industrial marketing perspective, revealing the interdependencies among actors for MA and the content of the interaction. It also contributes to the industrial marketing literature that has recently stressed the importance of NBAs as part of the extended business network of a company by identifying different categories of actors, their role in terms of knowledge and legitimization and the features and the trade-off of the extended business network in highly regulated markets.

Physician satisfaction (PHS) in the pharmaceutical business is a major issue that has created serious concerns for pharmaceutical companies and medical practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to explore the mediation effect of physician perceived value (PPV) on the relationship between marketing mix strategy (MMS) and PHS in the pharmaceutical industry in Yemen.

A non-probability purposive sample of 500 physicians was surveyed by using a self-administered questionnaire. Out of the 500 questionnaires, only 192 surveys were returned. Consequently, only 170 questionnaires were usable for the final analysis, with a 34 percent usable response rate. Several statistical techniques were performed including reliability, factor analysis, multiple regressions analysis, and hierarchical regressions to examine the mediation effect of the PPV.

The results showed that MMS elements, namely, product, price, promotion, and place, significantly contributed to PHS. The results also indicated that MMS elements, namely, price, place, and promotion, significantly contributed to PPV, whereas product showed an insignificant contribution. The PPV significantly contributed to PHS. Hierarchical regression results indicated that PPV partially mediated the relationship among MMS elements, namely, price, place, promotion, and PHS. Product variable was excluded in hierarchical analyses because the variable was insignificant to PPV.

This paper is the first to deal with perceived value as a mediating variable between elements of MMS (4Ps) for drug product and PHS in the context pharmaceutical business.

The purpose of this study is to reveal important insights by examining the relationships of two different field managers’ monitoring styles with performance through salespersons’ engagement.

Data was collected from 318 salespersons’ from 20 pharmaceutical firms. Given the performance-driven nature of the pharmaceutical sales profession, field managers seek to adopt the best monitoring style, which can optimize individual’s performance while providing a healthy work environment.

The results from multivariate analysis show the evidence of positive relationship between interactional monitoring and salespersons’ engagement. The results also confirm that engagement partially mediates the proposed relationships.

Authors assimilate and extend research and theory on field managers’ monitoring, salespersons’ performance and salespersons’ engagement to advance a model of salespersons’ reactions to different monitoring styles based on self-determination theory. Perhaps in no other field, the salespersons-field managers’ relationship is as important as in the field of pharmaceutical selling. The study offers insights about the important consequence of two different monitoring styles; also the study is one of the exceptional efforts to provide evidence regarding the role of engagement in the relationship between two different monitoring styles and salespersons’ performance.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the efficiency of US healthcare in an international context. The paper emphasizes the concept of efficiency and explores implications for pharmaceutical marketing.

Literature review, economic theory, secondary data and bivariate regression were used to describe and evaluate US healthcare spending and pharmaceutical marketing.

US healthcare spending is inordinately high as a share of gross domestic product within developed countries and this is associated with a relatively high share of private finance. But public sector finance is displacing private payment and this trend is especially pronounced for pharmaceuticals. Public finance combined with fiscal pressure can be expected to curb use of pharmaceutical detailing and other forms of marketing. The limits of affordability are not well assessed and socio‐economic institutions to facilitate decisions about present and future costs have yet to evolve.

This paper provides a macro perspective for healthcare finance and the marketing of pharmaceuticals. It pioneers analysis of economics and international healthcare systems integrated with the foundations of demand for pharmaceutical marketing.

In a modern business scenario, firms have implemented customer-centric approaches to enable customer relationship management (CRM) to trigger business excellence. Business strategies are modernizing business marketing operations that mainly focused on the retention of profitable customers. The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the impact of marketing strategies (MS), information technology support (IT-S) and knowledge sharing (KS) in the effect of CRM in the pharmaceutical sector of Punjab, Pakistan.

Data were collected from the field force of national and international pharmaceuticals companies (N = 263) through a convenience sampling technique. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to examine data in SmartPLS 3.2.6.

The results indicated that IT-S and KS mediate the relationship between MS and CRM. More specifically, MS positively develops CRM through IT-S and KS.

This research contributes to the existing literature of pharmaceuticals by disclosing the field-force (medical representatives) specific role in developing CRM performance between pharmaceuticals firms and health-care physicians that are mainly based on knowledge advancement and influence these firms to adopt customer-centric business approaches to gain a competitive advantage to drive firm profitability.

This paper aims to review the progression of the pharmaceutical industry through the lens of government legislation in the USA. The goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of pharmaceutical marketing practices while providing direction for emerging pricing and promotional approaches.

This paper offers a comprehensive review of pharmaceutical marketing practices through an exhaustive review of the literature. Further, suggestions are made based on emerging marketing techniques found in the literature.

Changes in government legislation will continue to play a significant role in promotional activities of the pharmaceutical industry. This study identifies specific pricing and promotional tools the pharmaceutical industry can use in response to these emerging changes. Specific actions such as enhancing public image, reconfiguring sales forces, outsourcing and optimizing the pricing mix are suggested.

This paper presents clear guidelines for managers by affording applicable practical tools to offset changes posed by government legislation.

This paper seeks to fill a gap in research surrounding pricing and promotion in the pharmaceutical industry. Further, this paper offers concrete pricing and promotional approaches for pharmaceutical management.

The purpose of this paper is to address how the concept of branding exists in the pharmaceutical sector and Indian market in particular; and second, how this branding technique might be modified to optimize the marketing of branded generics in India.

The study was conducted using qualitative interviews with two sets of respondents in Kolkata city, India: first, 20 senior managers of five renowned Indian pharmaceutical companies and second, 20 physicians of two categories. Patterns of concordance for the author‐coder pairs were tested by using Cohen's kappa.

This study investigated the relationships between five different parameters deemed responsible for enhancing the brand awareness of pharmaceuticals. Out of these five parameters, the authors have identified that “importance of customers' perceptions and need achievement” leads to the development of a positioning statement to communicate the brand's functional values and brand personality; and “importance of pharma brand age in brand awareness” establishes the relationship of brand age with brand recall and communication in brand recall. A high value of Cohen's kappa has helped to establish the qualitative inquiry of the current research.

The authors have proposed that through the said five parameters, the pharmaceutical branding technique might be modified to optimise the marketing of branded generics in India. A strategic comprehensive model that has been constructed would give a direction for branding in the pharmaceutical industry.

This research work has extended prior pharmaceutical branding research by conceptualising the branding strategy as a brand awareness tool, in a new area called branded generic drugs in India.

Due to the proliferation of generic medicines, pharmaceutical marketing has become increasingly competitive, and marketing executives are now focusing their attention on understanding the prescribing behaviour of physicians to enable them to devise marketing strategies that would put them at a superior business position relative to their competitors. Previous studies carried out either lack a sound theoretical foundation, or report contrasting results, making generalizations sketchy. Thus, a better understanding of attitude-prescribing axiom is needed. Underpinned by the theory of reasoned action (TRA), this study aims to empirically examine the factors that predict the prescribing behaviour of physicians.

A conceptual model was developed and tested on a sample of 355 respondents drawn from 76 private and 50 public hospitals in Sudan. The data set from the questionnaire survey included both general practitioners (N = 200) and specialists (N = 155). Primary data gathered were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The findings reveal that the prescribing behaviour of physicians is positively influenced by the physician’s attitude towards direct marketing, personal selling, educational travel and public relations, but negatively influenced by gifts. Besides, the moderating effect of subjective norms showed no significant influence on the relationship between attitude and prescribing behaviour. However, gender seems to moderate the attitude towards health sector-related charity on prescribing behaviour and the attitude towards scientific conferences on prescribing behaviour.

The findings gathered from this study offers a significant contribution to the ongoing debate on the essential factors that influence the prescribing behaviour of physicians in the hospital setting.

By examining the essential factors that predict physicians’ prescribing behaviour, pharmaceutical companies can improve their understanding of physicians’ attitudes towards the pharmaceutical promotional tools. This is an aspect that is ill reflected in the literature.