STUDY OF PREVALENCE AND EFFECTIVENESS OF PROMOTIONAL TECHNIQUES IN RETAIL PHARMACEUTICAL MARKET

This research aims to identify the most effective and prevalent promotional techniques used in retail pharmaceutical market. A cross-sectional study was carried out in Riyadh (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) using the non-repeated random sampling technique. Ad hoc developed questionnaires were administered by means of face-to-face interviews or online via web software Sphinx (Python Documentation Generator). The relative importance of prevalence and the mean evaluation of effectiveness were determined for all studied marketing tools and for all groups of respondents (pharmaceutical sales representatives, community pharmacists, consumers, and the entire sample). Based on the results obtained, studied promotional techniques were ranked for prevalence and effectiveness. ANOVA and Scheffé test were used for determining the inter-group differences in average values of prevalence and in mean evaluation of effectiveness, while inter-individual differences were assessed by computing the coefficient of variation. Research findings showed that, according to all respondents, the most effective promotion technique was digital marketing, how- ever, all respondents considered digital marketing to be the least prevalent promotion technique. According to consumers and to the common opinion of all respondents, the most prevalent promotion technique in community pharmacies was merchandising, but, according to consumers, pharmaceutical sales representatives and common opinion of all respondents, the strength of impact of merchandising on consumers’ purchasing decisions (perceived effectiveness) was the least. The results of the present research contribute to the theory of pharmaceutical marketing; they may be useful to regulatory policy specialists, providing the better un- derstanding of which promotion techniques are commonly used in the retail pharmaceutical market; they can help pharmaceutical companies to focus on the most effective promotion methods, identifying which of promotion techniques are perceived as the most effective for marketing communication and having the strongest impact on consumers’ purchasing decisions.