The factors influencing customer choice of pharmaceutical brands in Sulaimani

Abstract

The pharmaceutical industry is an important component of health care systems throughout the world; it is comprised of many public and private organizations that discover, develop, manufacture and market medicines for human and animal health, as Physicians play major role in the selection of medicine to consume, this study aims to determine the most important factors influencing physician prescription behavior (medicine brand choice). In order to achieve this objective, a self-administered questionnaire designed, it was completed by 77 physicians in Sulaimani city. Iraq. Data were analyzed applying various statistical methods, such as descriptive statistics, and ANOVA. The results show that, the most important factors influence physician’s prescription behavior are patient compliance, medicine efficacy, patient buying power, and medicine availability respectively. this research suggests that future research may explore the factors influencing patient’s choice for over the counter medicine (OTC).

Keywords

• pharmaceutical marketing
• prescription behavior
• customer choice