Factors affecting the doctors prescription towards multivitamin and mineral preparation

Abstract

The pharmaceutical industry in Sri Lanka has become very competitive and among its main product categories Multivitamin and Mineral Preparations (MMPs) which consist of collection of vitamins and Minerals, have become even more competitive due to the nature of the product. The target audience of the category consists of three types of customer’s namely medical practitioners, pharmacists and patients. The main objective of the research was to investigate the factors influence on willingness to prescribe MMP by medical practitioners. The factors were identified under Six independent variables namely product quality, price, sales promotion, brand name, reference groups and patient knowledge. The dependent variable was willingness to prescribe. For the dependent and independent variables, hypotheses were developed and primary data for the research was collected by conducting a survey and data were collected from 100 local medical practitioners in government hospital and general practitioners. Data was analyzed using SPSS and correlation analysis was carried out to test the hypotheses. From the findings of the research several factors can be identified which may be useful for the management. That is the management need to develop MMPs with unique characteristics, attractive packages, creative brand names, effective pricing strategies and improve the product knowledge of sales personnel. As a conclusion by implementing the various strategies to cope with above factors the company makes it possible to achieve its objectives.