It is obvious that pharmaceutical companies face stiff competition from government sponsored hospitals and from pharmaceuticals themselves because each of them strives to increase sales for their products and thus profitability. Most pharmaceutical companies generally use huge sum of money on promotion, advertising and lobbying for customers to buy there products. Research indicates that in America, pharmaceutical drug businesses use an estimated amount twenty billion dollars every fiscal year on advertising campaigns.
Promotion is universal in healthcare periodicals and other media services like magazines, radios and television sets among others. In many nations, particularly America, pharmaceutical are granted permission to promote directly there medical products to the members of the public or its customers. According to research in the U. S. many pharmaceutical businesses normally make use of sales and marketing persons commonly referred to as drug sales representatives to promote the products to doctors and other suppliers of medical services.
In fact in America some of the pharmaceutical companies use these drug sales representatives to influence the current politicians so that they should not enforce laws that will not hinder their business activities. Promotion of medical drugs by pharmaceuticals in America is synchronized using federal Prescription Drug Marketing Act of 1987 (PDMA) which outlines all the promotional activities expected from these companies. (Marcia, 2004) Doctors and their profession Medical doctors are possibly the main significant contributors in pharmaceutical trades.
They have the duty to note down the recommendations that determine which medical drugs the patients are supposed to use. Research indicates that in order to succeed on pharmaceutical advertising campaign is very crucial to influence the doctors. Over the recent past pharmaceutical companies have developed procedures to sway the persons who sway the medical doctors. In fact there exist a number of ways of swaying these medical doctors and include, peer pressure, direct relations with pharmaceutical businesses, customers in this case the patients, and community or personal insurance agents.
These doctors have the task of prescribing correct drugs to their patients without being influenced by the adverts by pharmaceuticals on certain drugs in the market. Medical doctors in the U. S are guided by Prescription Drug Marketing Act (PDMA) which was enacted in the year 1987 by the federal laws adopted in the U. S. The PDMA Act set up lawful protection for recommending medical drug supply in order to warrant secure and efficient pharmaceuticals companies. The act is also intended to depress the trading of fake or imitated, contaminated, misbranded, less effective, and drugs which has expired. (Moynihan, 2003)