Page 198 - Introduction to Business

172 PART 2 Managing Business Behavior

Global Business

Pushing Pills Around the World

Once a company like Pfizer, through the free samples they bring to physicians’ offices,
innovation planning, discovers a drug are going to go away any time soon.
like Viagra, it then has to sell it. While direct-to- New technologies, however, may change the
consumer pharmaceutical advertising via television detailers’ roles to a considerable extent. For example,
and other media is permitted in the United States, the company iphysiciannet.com provides detailing to
this is not the case in all countries. physicians via computer-based videoconferencing.
The traditional focus of pharmaceutical drug A number of major pharmaceutical companies have
marketing throughout the developed world is the signed up for this service, which potentially allows
personal “detail.” This involves big drug companies company sales representatives to have more daily
organizing a large team of sales representatives. interactions with physicians in a more monitored
These sales representatives receive intensive training setting. Selling pharmaceutical drugs is a multibillion
about the company’s products and pharmaceuticals dollar per year business, and pharmaceutical
in general, and then are assigned a territory in which companies are continually trying to figure out how
they regularly visit doctors and try to sell their to best organize and allocate resources to this
company’s drugs. The idea is that through face-to- endeavor.
face visits with physicians, the detailers can persuade
Source: “Pushing Pills,” The Economist, February 13, 2003, p. 61;
doctors to write a lot of prescriptions for their telephone interview with Mr. Charles Van Cott, executive vice presi-
company’s products and to use their company’s dent, iphysiciannet.com, March 20, 2003.
products rather than similar products sold by other
companies. Questions
This organizational technique for marketing
1. How do you think the performance of pharma-
pharmaceutical drugs, however, has had its
ceutical detailers is measured? What kind of
problems. In Italy, for example, there have been
technology is necessary?
recent investigations of 40 employees of the British
2. Who should regulate any ethical issues that arise
drug company GlaxoSmithKline and 30 physicians for
between detailers and physicians?
comparaggio, which is physicians agreeing to
3. What disadvantages are there to Internet or
prescribe company drugs in exchange for free
computer detailing versus traditional face-to-face
computers and other lavish gifts. Nevertheless, it’s
detailing?
unlikely that pharmaceutical company detailers, or
organization. But once Michael Dell hired someone, an organization was formed.
organizational structure Specified All organizations have some sort of structure. More specifically, organizational
positions within an organization and the structure involves specified positions within an organization and how they interre-
ways they interrelate with each other
late with each other. For example, major pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer,
Merck, and GlaxoSmithKline have people in their organizations who do research on
the market for legal drugs and the people who sell these drugs, the detailers. The
detailers need to constantly interface with purchasers. For example, they need to be
able to quickly inform physicians about a newly discovered use for a drug.
Different organizations need different types of organizational structures. The type
of organizational structure that works best in the military, for instance, may not be at
all effective in an Internet start-up company. Moreover, organizational structures
may change with changing circumstances. Let’s say that a major league baseball team
decides that any new players it hires during the next five years are already going to
have had at least some playing experience with another major league team. If the
team adopts such a strategic plan, it probably will not need as many people working
in its minor league organization. Similarly, an accounting firm or other business that
adopts such a hiring approach, i.e., experienced employees only, can probably
sharply downsize or even temporarily eliminate its college recruiting department.

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