Identifying Communication Intelligence for Drug Adoption in India

Identifying Communication Intelligence for Drug Adoption in India 1 D. Goswami*, 2 N. Jain, 1 D. R. Agarwal 1 Institute of Technology Management University, Gurgaon, 2 India Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India _______________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract: Most of the researches on drug adoption concentrate on suppliers’ environment of new drug development and diffusion. Very little research considers on understanding of intention of drug usage through physician-patient interactions. This research investigates link between drug adoption and drug usage intention through communication intensity of physicians and patients within their drug usage relationships in India. A conceptual framework supports communication strategies to be developed based on disease complexities (type of disease and patients’ lifestyle), physicians’ self-confidence in the drug effectiveness and marketing incentives offered by pharmaceutical firms. An unstructured repertory grid survey involving fifteen physicians and a structured retrospective survey with two thousand patients at hospitals located in National Capital Region (NCR) were conducted to show the effects of firms’ communication for drug usage. Data mining technique is used to analyse the data. The results show with increased marketing and word-of-mouth communication drug adoption for challenging disease also improves. An implication for managers is that both marketing and wordof-mouth communication operate through the firm’s communication programming.