While volatile marketing spending, as opposed to even-level spending, may improve a brand’s financial performance, it can also increase the volatility of performance, which is not a desirable outcome. This paper analyzes how revenue and cash-flow volatility are influenced by own and competitive marketing spending volatility, by the level of marketing spending, by the responsiveness to own marke...

this commentary explores the implications of increased social media marketing by drug manufacturers, based on findings in hyosun kim’s article of the major themes in recent food and drug administration (fda) warning letters and notices of violation regarding online direct-to-consumer promotions of pharmaceuticals. kim’s rigorous analysis of fda letters over a 10-year span highlights a relative ...

As more and more marketers incorporate social media as an integral part of the promotional mix, rigorous investigation of the determinants that impact consumers’ engagement in eWOM via social networks is becoming critical. Given the social and communal characteristics of social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook, MySpace and Friendster, this study examines how social relationship factors ...

BACKGROUND Pharmaceutical representatives are a vital component of the marketing of pharmaceutical products and an important source of prescribing information for general practitioners. AIM A study was undertaken to explore the attitudes of New Zealand general practitioners to pharmaceutical representatives. METHOD A questionnaire survey of 100 general practitioners was undertaken to which ...

This paper takes two perspectives on the interface between marketing and manufacturing: a strategic perspective and a functional perspective. The former addresses the strategic links between the two functions, whereas the latter focuses on the more operational aspects of co-ordination between the two functions. While integration of marketing and manufacturing strategies is important, it can onl...

Without sales and marketing working to produce revenue, the firm ceases to exist. Yet, given the magnitude of what’s at stake, these two functions are often at odds with one another to the detriment of performance. This article reviews previous studies that investigate conflict, collaboration, and integration between the sales and marketing functions. Next, hypotheses are developed relating ali...

In 2000, pharmaceutical companies spent more than 15.7 billion dollars on promoting prescription drugs in the United States [2]. More than 4.8 billion dollars was spent on detailing, the one-on-one promotion of drugs to doctors by pharmaceutical sales representatives, commonly called drug reps. The average sales force expenditure for pharmaceutical companies is $875 million annually [3]. Unlike...

Convergence processes are based on the activity of distinct industry sectors showing crossindustry collaborations. The aim of this paper is to analyze cross-industry collaborations between the food and pharmaceutical sectors in the convergence area of functional foods. Selected companies from food (Nestlé/Danone) and pharmaceutical (Martek/Bayer HealthCare) sectors are analyzed using the determ...

Some or all of the promotional activities of pharmaceutical companies are typically governed through self-regulatory codes administered by industry associations. However, the conflicts between the commercial objectives and the ethical and scientific goals of promotion can potentially lead to serious weaknesses in the way in which these codes are enforced. This paper focuses on 5 critical aspect...