Proceedings of European Business Research Conference
Sheraton Roma, Rome, Italy, 5 - 6 September 2013, ISBN: 978-1-922069-29-0
In the last few years, the pharmaceutical industry in Pakistan has grown with a tremendous pace. According to IMS-health, the current volume of pharmaceutical industry in Pakistan is about 2 billion US$ which is growing at a rate of 13% annually. The Business has shifted from multinational manufacturing & marketing companies to national drug manufacturing companies. Currently almost 60% of market share is with NPCs while MNCs share has reduced from 80% to 40%. There is a need to determine what factors have influenced the practitioners to prescribe low cost generic alternatives of NPCs than to more costly products of MNCs. In this study, the researcher has studied 3 main factors which he thinks influence the prescribing behaviour and are related to the increasing sales of national pharmaceutical companies in Pakistan namely low prices of the products, ethnocentrism and quality of products. A conceptual model (PEQ Model) is tested and analyzed through SPSS 18.0 to establish the effect of low prices, ethnocentrism and quality on the prescribing behaviour towards the generic products of NPCs. The structured questionnaire is administered to record the responses from medical doctors on a 5 point likert scale. The responses collected were statistically analyzed through SPSS 18.0 using the multiple regression analysis. It is concluded that Ethnocentrism is the major factor which influence the prescribing behaviour of doctors towards the locally manufactured products along with quality while low prices have a negative relationship with prescribing behaviour. This study has very fruitful implications for pharmaceutical managers, as in light of these findings the industry players can review their pricing and promotion strategies while
Ethnocentrism can be given a key position in the marketing planning and promotional tactics.
JEL Codes: M30, M31 and M39
Keywords: Pharmaceutical Marketing, Ethnocentrism, NPC (National
Pharmaceutical Company), MNC (Multinational Pharmaceutical Company)
Mr. Aasim Farooq, University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan.
Email: aasim.farook@gmail.com