Two essays on pharmaceutical marketing

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on important factors influencing a physician’s prescription behaviors. In the first essay, “Comparative Marketing Communication: The Case of Drug Detailing,” I examine the effectiveness of comparative detailing (the personal selling to physicians) versus noncomparative detailing and investigate whether a brand’s comparative detailing directly damages competing brands or provides them free exposure to physicians. The study finds that (1) comparative detailing is less or equally effective than noncomparative detailing at the aggregate level, but there is strong heterogeneity across individual physicians; (2) the market leader faces a denigrating loss, but a generic brand enjoys a free-exposure benefit. In the second essay, “Physician Prescriptions of Generic Drugs versus Branded Drugs”, I examine the multifaceted factors that affect a physician’s choice of generic drugs versus branded drugs in statin category. I find that state generic substitution regulations and the format of prescription pad may significantly alter physician prescription preferences for generic drug versus branded drug and their responsiveness to detailing activities