Perception Of Medical Doctors Towards Personal Selling Practices Of Medical Representatives Of Pharmaceutical Firms In Nairobi
Abstract
This study sort to investigate the perception of medical doctors towards personal selling
practices of medical representatives of pharmaceutical firms in Nairobi. To achieve this,
doctors were asked if they agreed or otherwise with the way medical representatives
performed certain aspects of the personal selling processes.
The population of interest for this study comprised all medical doctors in Nairobi. The
sample frame used was the Kenya medical directory of 2002-2003.According to this
directory,1348 medical specialists existed in Nairobi. Out of this ,only 1108 were medical
doctors who frequently interacted with medical representatives .A sample size of 80
doctors was used and convenient sampling was used to select the sample units.
Primary data was used in this study and data was collected using questionnaires comprising
both open and closed ended questions. Research assistants were fellow medical
representatives and the questionnaire was administered to the doctors using drop and pick
later method as the researcher and research assistants visited their clinics or area of
practice.
Collected data was analyzed by use of tables and percentages were used to summarize and
reflect the relative weight of a specific process in comparison with total number of
responses. Likert scale was used to measure perception of doctors towards personal selling
practices of medical representatives. From this study, it was found that as much as medical
representatives were important in providing information to doctors, they lacked skills in
getting to know the doctors needs and closing a sale, they were perceived not to be genuine
and were unable to discuss medicine and other drugs with doctors other than what they
were selling. This could have been caused by the fact that doctors are intelligent and
medical representatives because they are not doctors may not be able to discuss technical
issues with them.
It was recommended that product managers design good training programs for medical
representatives and offer continuous information to medical representatives so they could
be able to be of value to doctors.
This study was conducted in Nairobi and therefore the perception of medical doctors could
not be generalized as results may vary in rural areas.Future studies could be carried out to
find out the importance of these personal selling practices to doctors.
Citation
Masters in Business Administration, University of Nairobi (2003)Publisher
University of Nairobi Faculty of Commerce