• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.58-76
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• 2003

Background : Aim of this study is focused on the analysis of the needed abilities of medical representatives resulting in building up the market and increasing sales. It is to propose methods to increase this ability ensuring continuous growth in market share and profit. Methods : A survey was conducted between January 6 and May 31, 2003. Using SPSS(Version 10.0), the collected data was analyzed by Hotelling T2, factor analysis. Some hypotheses were selected to include the conclusion. Some questionnaires for physicians working in hospitals or clinics and the medical representatives working in a pharmaceutical company were created and asked to them to either prove or reject those hypotheses. The results were analyzed to find the primary factors that effect the interactions between physician and the medical representatives. These factors were also studied along with the theoretical research based on published references. Results : The results were as follows. The main reasons for the physician to meet with a medical representatives were collection of product informations needed for patient treatment and collection of informations on current medical issue and as well as personal interests. The main parameters by which physicians evaluate the medical representatives are human relationship including sincerity and manners and supply of accurate and unbiased information on products. Overall, the medical representatives' perception on the importance of medical knowledge and ability to deliver it are lower than that expected by physicians. Conclusion : Medical and pharmaceutical companies' environment are changed rapidly. And those changes forced medical representatives to set new roles and competency. In order to drive away from the past 'rule of thumb' and 'adaptation to circumstance', optimal method and systemic development to train and support the medical representatives should be quipped. They will help medical representatives to be specialists in medical knowledge and to understand the exact need of health care professions. Product competitiveness will be increased and eventually successful business can be achieved through it.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.105-114
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• 2017

Purpose - Recently, domestic pharmaceutical market is growing steadily, but top-tier companies are concentrating on sales growth. In this market, SMEs, which account for more than 80% of the entire market, suffer from the problem of lower margins and increasing inventory costs. According to the government's policy changes related to pharmaceuticals, it is pointed out that the management of existing customers and the control of salespeople are important issues for pharmaceutical companies. This study investigates the effect of the control system on the salesperson in domestic pharmaceutical distribution channel on customer-oriented selling behaviors and sales performance. Research design, data, and methodology - To verify the proposed research model and test hypotheses, the authors selected 244 MR(medical representatives)'s responses which have currently relationship with doctors or pharmacists. This study carefully investigated the reliability, content validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of the proposed model. Results - The authors find out the following results: capacity control, activity control, and self control have positive effects on customer-oriented selling behaviors and customer-oriented selling behaviors have a positive effect on sales performance. In addition, we present alternative model to check the direct effect between the control systems and the sales performance, but control system factors except self control have no direct influence. Conclusions - First of all, competency control and activity control increases the customer-oriented selling behavior of the salesperson. This means that the salesperson's sales skill, negotiation skill, customer access skill, presentation ability, monitoring, direction and evaluation are important and it is also important to control activities to check the number of visits to customers, report preparation, and customer service etiquette. Second, the fact that self-control of salesperson affects the customer-oriented selling behavior suggests that self-control is not controlled by external factors but rather establishes short/long-term goals. Therefore, it is important for sales organization to create an environment in which members can induce persistent incentives for self-control. Finally, output control did not affect customer-oriented sales behavior, which is less likely to form confidence or motivation to MRs when output control is perceived as a means of monitoring, supervising, or controlling rather than providing information to salespeople.