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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of direct-to-physician promotion on physicians’ prescription behaviour. There were very few studies which have investigated to what extent the pharmaceutical promotion directed towards physicians influences physicians’ prescription behaviour in the Malaysian context.

A research framework has been developed based on the buyer behaviour stimulus-response model. A survey method has been used to collect data from 154 medical practitioners from private health-care facilities located at Klang valley in Malaysia. IBM SPSS and SmartPLS statistical programs have been used to analyse the data and validate the model.

This study found that personal selling is the most significant promotional tool for physicians’ prescription behaviour, whereas advertising is the least significant one. Sales promotion and public relations are the second and third most significant promotional tools. Direct marketing is found to be not significant.

This paper will help the pharmaceutical companies develop more effective plans to gain a competitive advantage for their business by having a guideline for pharmaceutical marketers as an input to the more efficient allocation of their promotional budgets.

This study has introduced a comprehensive understanding of all the factors in the pharmaceutical promotion that influence physicians’ prescription behaviour in Malaysia and how these factors are interrelated, influencing physicians’ prescribing medicines for patients.

This study aims to examine the antecedent factors (internal and external) that influence intentions to buy over-the-counter (OTC) medicines in Jordan.

A conceptual framework was developed based on consumer buying behavior theoretical background and a review of the relevant literature. A quantitative approach and a convenience sampling method were used to obtain data from self-administered questionnaires, which were completed by 351 academic staff from selected Jordanian universities.

The results indicate that all antecedent factors (internal, external and combined) have significant positive influences on the intentions to buy OTC medicines. Internal factors are more influential than external factors; however, the combination of internal and external factors resulted in the greatest influence on buying OTC medicines compared to each category separately.

This paper has integrated and examined empirically the antecedent factors that influence intentions to buy OTC medicines (internal, external and combined) in Jordan’s business environment context as a developing country for the first time.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of these unethical promotional activities on patient’s quality of life.

In-depth interviews were conducted, and then quantitative method was also used on a large number of health care professionals.

Findings of the study demonstrated that unethical activities influence biased prescriptions and then it helps to misuse of medicines. The drug resistance is also affected by misuse of medicines. Misuse of medicine further affects on financial burden on patient. Drug resistance has impact on health compromise. Furthermore, finding of the study describes that drug resistance, health compromise and financial lead to the imbalance of patient’s quality of life. Overall, findings revealed that pharmaceutical unethical promotional activity to achieve sales target is also a major cause of elements that disturbs patient’s quality of life.

This is a research paper and not published before.

The substitution of generic prescription medicines for branded medicines is being practiced in most westernised countries, with evidence of a strong focus on evaluating and monitoring its economic impacts. In contrast, the purpose of this paper is to explore the generic substitution experience of customers and pharmacists in a pharmacy practice setting.

The study applied a phenomenological method using the narrative inquiry technique combined with critical event analysis, in order to understand the generic medicine experience as perceived by customers and pharmacists as key substitution actors. Interviews were conducted with 15 pharmacists and 30 customers in Australia, Finland and Italy, using a narrative inquiry technique combined with critical events and metaphors.

The findings show that customers, with poor awareness of generic prescription medicine when offered as a substitute, were likely to become confused and suspicious. Pharmacists related how they felt challenged by having to facilitate generic substitution by educating unaware customers, in isolation from both the prescribing doctor and the government/insurer. They also experienced frustration due to the mistrust and annoyance their customers displayed.

The findings suggest that to increase generic substitution, open dialogue is paramount between all the participants of this service network, along with the development of targeted promotional materials.

Little is known about how customers and pharmacists experience the service phenomenon of generic medicine substitution. This paper explores how the key actors at the point of substitution make sense of the process. Additionally, the methodology provides a technique for obtaining a deeper understanding of both the customer and pharmacist experience of generic medicine, along with insights into how the uptake of generic medicine might be improved.

The paper's aim is to analyze the functional relationships between factors related to the prescription of medical drugs in Brazil.

A survey was conducted among 232 medical doctors in Brazil. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire. Five hypotheses on the factors impacting drug prescription were proposed, and the constructs were validated using a set of techniques pertaining to the calculation of structural equations.

The process of medical drug prescription in Brazil is positively correlated with all the presented constructs. However, the study found that the five proposed hypotheses demonstrated varying degrees of positive effect levels, ranging from strong to weak. Particularly, factors such as the characteristics of the drug and information available on a drug have the weakest effect, while the cost‐benefit ratio of a drug has a moderate effect. The drug's brand and its related advertising have the strongest effect.

The results demonstrate the success of specific applications of advertising tools and brand construction in pharmaceutical marketing strategies targeting Brazilian physicians.

The study provides a broad map to understand the influences on drug prescriptions. Despite a prior study that found the behavior of physicians to be impacted by a different set of factors, this new research clearly shows that, in the Brazilian context, branding and advertising remain the major influences.

Pharmaceutical marketers and manufactures create hype of demand among patients towards a specific brand of drug or disease through drug advertisements. It induces the patients to seek additional information of the brand and ask for its prescription generation by the physician. The paper aims to determine the attitude of the physicians towards direct to consumer advertising (DTCA) and to examine the extent of patients’ request for a specific brand which leads to actual prescription generation.

Quantitative study, data was collected from field setting general practicing Doctors/Physicians in the leading hospitals. Quantitative data was collected from physicians working in leading hospitals. Doctors were selected on judgmental basis with high patient turnover. Sample size consists of 250 doctors, and questionnaire were adopted from two authors. Attitude of physicians towards DTCA and information inquired by the patient are two independent variables, whereas prescription generation by the physicians is dependent variable. SPSS was tool for data analysis.

Physicians have positive attitude towards DTCA and information provision to patient and consider it supplementary in overall health-care system. Advertising induces patients to visit physician and seek appropriate treatment and get induced to ask for further information.

Time and resources were limited.

First, it contributes towards knowledge, second, it shows the importance of DTCA and its impact on prescription generation and, third, it will help in devising drug advertising policy.

Highlights the issue are of not only misuse of drugs but also malpractice of drug prescription.

First, it explores the impact of the attitude of physicians along with the patients’ request on prescription generation behaviour. Second, it examines the impact of inquiring additional information about specific brand from the physician that might lead to the prescription generation. Finally, there is no study from the developing countries like Pakistan.

The purpose of this paper is to describe an AI (Artificial Intelligence) that can “think like an African traditional doctor”. The system proposes to model and to use attitudes taken and concepts used by African traditional doctors when facing cases. It is designed to go deep into the concepts of African traditional medicine (ATM) by dealing with all the possible interpretations of those concepts, and to produce more much satisfying and accurate support for medical diagnosis and prescription than existing systems.

To take into account the sometimes strange concepts used and attitudes taken by African traditional healers, including mystical considerations, the system relies on a deep ontology describing all those concepts and attitudes in a more computer readable manner allowing a multi-agent system to have full access to ATM knowledge. Ethnological inquiries, literary analysis and interviews of traditional doctors (the holders of African medicine knowledge) were performed to gather sufficient data to achieve the work.

The paper addresses this question of how to build a practical large-scope computer-aided diagnosis and prescription system which can exploit deep descriptions of ATM concepts, including mystical considerations. The system also provides scientific interpretations to some concepts sometimes considered as mystical facts. It is a java web-based platform combined to a Java Agent Development framework multi-agent system accessing an ontology to provide its results.

Because of the origins of healers involved in this research (from Gabon and Cameroon, countries of Central Africa), the ontology and the collected data may lack generalizability in the African scope and then it is a prototype. Therefore, ATM experts all over the continent are encouraged to participate to improve and standardize the ATM ontology and to populate the knowledge base. On the other side, the system cannot give scientific explanations to all the mystical considerations in ATM, there still some facts which cannot be rationally explained for now.

The paper demonstrates the practical usability of the implemented system on the diagnosis and the treatment of a patient case.

The research describes a system which once validated by traditional experts, will serve as a tool to assist them in their day-to-day diagnosis and prescription tasks and will also serve as a reference on ATM practices for all interested users.

The paper provides an in-depth description of a computer-aided diagnosis system (CADS) that promotes indigenous technology from an African perspective. Comparing to the former systems identified in the literature, the proposed system is the first which deals with believes and mystical considerations in ATM, and also the first which provides a function to rank its results.

This study aims to explore the views of pharmacy professionals (PPs) in Portugal about generic medicines and international non-proprietary name (INN) prescribing and compare them with the views of general practitioners (GPs).

A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample of 185 community PPs and 85 GPs. Their perceptions were examined using a five-point Likert scale applied to statements focusing on five main topics of interest: motivation, safety, users’ perceptions and knowledge, advantages and disadvantages of generic medicines and INN prescribing. Daily experiences and suggestions for decreasing health and pharmaceutical expenses were explored through open-ended questions. Nonparametric tests were used to compare attitudes between both groups and to explore associations between the level of agreement and respondents’ demographic characteristics. Content analysis was used to categorize the answers to the open-ended questions.

Generally, GPs expressed more negative opinions toward generics and INN prescribing than PPs. GPs perceived generics as less effective, less safe, inferior in quality, more likely to cause side effects and believed that users do not trust them. Both groups believed that patients remain very confused and ill-informed about generics, only adhering to them because of their low cost and expressed concerns about the existence of an excessive number of generic medicines and the lack of patients’ responsibility toward medicines costs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study represents the first attempt to elicit and compare Portuguese GPs and PPs opinions concerning INN prescribing.

This paper aims to investigate older consumers' perceptions of the effects of direct‐to‐consumer advertising (DTCA), their views on the amount and type of information that should be provided, and their understanding of information typically contained.

Participants were 97 adult members of a social/education group, aged 55 to 87, who completed a questionnaire during the group's usual weekly meeting. There were four versions of the questionnaire; two types of medication (arthritis versus diabetes) and two ad formats (short versus long).

There was little difference between the versions in the accuracy of participants' recall of key pieces of information, suggesting that providing additional information may convey little additional benefit. Participants reported limited perceived benefits of DTCA, and expressed concern that DTCA may cause people to ask their doctor for inappropriate medicines, rely more on medicines to solve their health, and become more confused.

This study suggests that there is a need to consider consumers' perceptions of benefits and costs of DTCA when deciding whether to introduce it (e.g. in Australia) or remove it (e.g. New Zealand). Further, at least for older consumers, providing large quantities of information may increase cognitive demands without producing additional benefits.

The majority of previous studies of DTCA have used either student samples (with manipulated salience of information) or general population surveys. This study utilised a sample of older adults, including 55 per cent with arthritis and 13 per cent with diabetes. Further, as this study used US ads with an Australian population, one can be confident that participants' knowledge of the medications was purely from the ads read and not from previous exposure.

A Novartis social business in India completely separated the activities of its social and business units—the former engaging in raising the health awareness of villagers and encouraging them to visit free health camps, while the latter developed affordable medicine delivered directly to village pharmacies. Connections between these units were made through open and fluid market-type mechanisms, and by appealing to the needs and interests of villagers with incentives. This synchronized business model was developed partly because Novartis believed in villagers' self-initiated behavior for health improvements, which made it not interfere into marginalized institutions, and more significantly because it used its internalized control and coordination systems with clear goals of social contribution in operating the business unit. Consequently, Novartis achieved economies of scale, business sustainability, and social contribution.