MEASURING e-BUSINESS ACTIVITIES OF PHARMACEUTICAL FIRMS IN CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT: DEVELOPMENT OF A COMPITITOR ANALYSIS TOOL

Firms need to develop new capabilities to sustain competitive advantage, which include formulating unique, direct relationships with customers. To compete by integrating e-business in all aspects a firm's operations translates into need for developing new skills as traditional ways of competing become insufficient (Porter 2001). Towards this end pharmaceutical firms are using the Web to institute relationships with customers (physicians and patients). Our research focused on developing a technique that would allow for benchmarking web activities of various firms in the US pharmaceutical industry based on a model developed by Chen (1996) for competitor analysis. Our technique attempts to avoid the typical blind spots of competitor analysis as identified by Zajac and Bazerman (1991) and Zahra and Chaples (1993). We used a method called Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and analyzed seven pharmaceutical firms, selected by executives from the pharmaceutical industry, to compare their web activities. Results suggest that Merck, Novartis and Eli Lilly were far ahead in the web activities related to the customer relationship management (CRM). Warner Lambert had more focused efforts in patient relationship where as Eli Lilly had a very high focus on physician relationship. Implications and future research directions have been discussed.