A Cluster Analysis of Physician’s Values, Prescribing Behaviour and Attitudes towards Firms’ Marketing Communications

Abstract

In this paper, the authors present an exploratory research on the associations between physicians’ personal values with physicians’ prescribing criteria and preferred marketing communications. The research involved extant marketing research and primary data collection. The resulting quantitative research instrument was then administered to a sample of 69 physicians, yielding a 69% response rate. All but the demographic measures were tapped by 5-point scales and a series of factor and reliability analyses assessed unidimentionality and reliability of research constructs. A series of ANOVAs and Tukey tests depicted the differences among three clusters. Implications are that physicians’ personal values may be a meaningful basis of segmentation for the pharmaceutical market, and findings may be useful for both marketing strategy planners and researchers examining physicians’ prescription behavior and attitudes towards firms’ marketing communication efforts.