News-Record.com

Do efforts by pharmaceutical companies to market drugs to physicians and consumers sway their decision-making? Not according to recent research co-published by a visiting professor at Duke's business school. Since the news release is not online, I'll reproduce a big chunk of it here.

DURHAM, N.C. -- When it comes to giving samples and writing prescriptions, doctors are swayed by science -- not by cozy relationships between themselves and pharmaceutical marketing reps or by advertising aimed at patients, new research shows.

"Drug marketing has been portrayed like some scary movie where pharmaceutical firms are shoving drugs in our veins for the sake of profits, but that doesn't gibe with our results," said Stefan Stremersch, a visiting professor of marketing at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and chaired professor of marketing at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. "Marketing can actually spur doctors and patients -- and doctors and drug reps -- to have more informative conversations about the benefits and side effects of drugs. Marketing isn't about buying off physicians."

The study by Stremersch and Sriram Venkataraman, assistant professor of marketing at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University, contradicts the widely held perception that pharmaceutical marketing, directly to patients or doctors, adversely affects public health.

Their study, "The Debate of Influencing Doctors' Decisions: Are Drug Characteristics the Missing Link?" is featured in the November 2007 edition of Management Science. The study was produced independently of the pharmaceutical industry, and may have important implications for policy makers and authorities exploring the way marketing affects drug dispensation, the researchers say.

The authors' analysis is based on an examination of data provided by a large firm specializing in pharmaceutical marketing and clinical trial reports from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. The data yield five key findings, all of which illuminate how marketing affects doctors' decision-making:

-- Marketing efforts are more successful for more effective drugs than less effective drugs.

-- Excessive marketing efforts can actually lower the distribution of less effective drugs.

-- Marketing efforts are more successful for drugs with more side effects than drugs with fewer side effects.

-- Physicians will accommodate requests more often for drugs with fewer side effects.

-- Physicians are more responsive to patient requests for more effective drugs.

"There is evidence that physicians rely on science while prescribing," Venkataraman said. "If a drug has many side effects, it's best to have a sales rep explain those side effects directly to a doctor rather than firms bypassing medical professionals with ads aimed at patients."

Stremersch and Venkataraman found that marketing to physicians or advertising-prompted requests from patients do not automatically result in more samples or prescriptions being handed out for the marketed drug. For some drugs, the opposite may be the case.

"The reason is probably physician irritation," Stremersch said.

The findings seem somewhat counterintuitive, in the sense that you'd think pharmaceutical companies wouldn't spend what they do on marketing if that marketing didn't result in additional sales. But it might be that what additional sales do result are 1) economically satisfactory to the companies and 2) not the result of any undue influence.

What do you think?

(Abstract of the journal article is here; the full text is behind a pay firewall.)