This research study has been conducted to find out the promotional tools offered by pharmaceutical industry that are said to be more influencing by the physicians of different practicing status i.e., in government service, private service, and private practitioner. A well-structured schedule was developed for conducting the study. The survey was conducted and data were analyzed on the basis of responses provided by 600 respondents. Physicians in private service assigned significantly greater importance to various kinds of sponsorships, such as sponsorship for personal tours, sponsorship for stay in conferences, sponsorship for travel expenses in conferences, sponsorship for medical equipments and personal gifts, as compared to physicians in government service and private practice. Moreover, government physicians assigned significantly greater importance to medicine samples and the personality of the medical representative as compared to private practitioners. The study recommends that pharmaceutical companies should plan different kinds of promotional tools and strategies for physicians based on their different needs and practicing status.

Pharmaceutical marketing is a specialized field where personal selling forms the backbone of the entire marketing effort. Pharmaceutical companies appoint medical representatives and field managers and assign them defined territories. Medical representatives meet doctors, chemists and stockists as per company norms. Pharmaceutical companies try to influence prescription pattern of doctors in favor of their brands by providing various kinds of promotional inputs, such as samples of medicines, gifts, paid trips, and sponsorships for personal or professional purpose. But different physicians may have different kinds of needs and the same set of promotional tools for all the physicians may not bring desired business results for the pharmaceutical companies. In view of this, pharmaceutical companies should try to segregate the needs of different physicians on different variables. This paper attempts to find out whether physicians practicing in different kinds of hospitals, i.e., government and private hospitals, and private practitioners, have similar or different kinds of needs, and whether same or different kinds of promotional tools would be required for obtaining maximum prescription support from physicians.

Physicians Perception Towards Promotional Tools Offered by Pharmaceutical Industry: A Comparative Practicing Status-wise Analysis,companies, private, physicians, promotional, government, sponsorship, marketing, Pharmaceutical, doctors, representatives, hospitals, significantly, managers, Medical, pattern, personality, pharmaceutical, Physicians, practitioner, brands, backbone, professional, representative