The influences of promotional tools and moral judgment on physicians' prescription behaviour of Malaysian practitioners

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to investigate the influences of pharmaceutical promotional tools and moral judgment on physician’s prescription behaviour. There are very few researches that have studied to what extent physicians’ prescription behaviour is influenced by pharmaceutical promotional activities and moral beliefs. This research integrates theories from consumer behaviour and ethics to explore physicians’ prescription behaviour in response to pharmaceutical advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, public relations, direct marketing and moral judgment. The aggressive promotional activities put the physicians in an ethical dilemma and triggered the need of moral reasoning for physicians even when regulatory bodies exist. Hence, this research also studied the role of moral judgment on physicians’ prescription behaviour and to what extent it moderates the relationship between the behaviour and the promotions. A quantitative approach has been employed to collect data from 154 medical practitioners from private healthcare facilities located at Klang Valley, Malaysia. SPSS (version 25) and SmartPLS (version 3.2.9) statistical programs have been used to analyze the data and validate the model. This study finds that sales promotion is the most significant promotional tool for physicians’ prescription behaviour, whereas personal selling is the least significant one. Public relations and advertising are the second and third most significant promotional tools. However, direct marketing is found to be not significant. Additionally, the findings also show that moral judgment is a strong predictor for physicians’ prescription behaviour and acts as a quasi-moderator in the relationships between direct-to-physician promotion and physicians’ prescription behaviour. The outcome from this research has contributed to new theoretical insights. The study concludes that pharmaceutical companies need to restructure their promotional practices beside educating their sales representatives in ethical decision-making principles in dealing with physicians. It also recommends specific guidelines to pharmaceutical marketers, practitioners and policy makers to achieve significant improvement in the healthcare sector.