The impact of information use on decision making in the pharmaceutical industry

1998 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 196-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie‐Laure Bouchet ◽  
Tracy Hopkins ◽  
Margaret Kinnell ◽  
Cliff McKnight
Author(s):  
Babak Sohrabi ◽  
Iman Raeesi Vanani ◽  
Nastaran Nikaein ◽  
Saeideh Kakavand

Purpose In the pharmaceutical industry, marketing and sales managers often deal with massive amounts of marketing and sales data. One of their biggest concerns is to recognize the impact of actions taken on sold-out products. Data mining discovers and extracts useful patterns from such large data sets to find hidden and worthy patterns for the decision-making. This paper, too, aims to demonstrate the ability of data-mining process in improving the decision-making quality in the pharmaceutical industry. Design/methodology/approach This research is descriptive in terms of the method applied, as well as the investigation of the existing situation and the use of real data and their description. In fact, the study is quantitative and descriptive, from the point of view of its data type and method. This research is also applicable in terms of purpose. The target population of this research is the data of a pharmaceutical company in Iran. Here, the cross-industry standard process for data mining methodology was used for data mining and data modeling. Findings With the help of different data-mining techniques, the authors could examine the effect of the visit of doctors overlooking the pharmacies and the target was set for medical representatives on the pharmaceutical sales. For that matter, the authors used two types of classification rules: decision tree and neural network. After the modeling of algorithms, it was determined that the two aforementioned rules can perform the classification with high precision. The results of the tree ID3 were analyzed to identify the variables and path of this relationship. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to provide the real-world direct empirical evidence of “Analytics of Physicians Prescription and Pharmacies Sales Correlation Using Data Mining.” The results showed that the most influential variables of “the relationship between doctors and their visits to pharmacies,” “the length of customer relationship” and “the relationship between the sale of pharmacies and the target set for medical representatives” were “deviation from the implementation plan.” Therefore, marketing and sales managers must pay special attention to these factors while planning and targeting for representatives. The authors could focus only on a small part of this study.


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 558-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lotta-Maria Sinervo ◽  
Petra Haapala

Purpose The highest decision-making body in a municipality is the council, whose members are elected every fourth year. Therefore, local politicians are in the key position in using financial information in decision making. The purpose of this paper is to study Finnish local politicians’ use of financial information. Design/methodology/approach This paper studies the speech of local politicians as they describe financial operations and financial position of the municipalities they represent. Here, the words of local politicians are considered an expression of their use of financial information. The use of financial information includes its impact on decision making. The focus is on the impact of different individual characteristics of financial information use in speech about financial operations and financial position. The paper employs qualitative empirical data collected through semi-structured thematic interviews with members of the Finnish local government. Data are analyzed with descriptive statistical methods. Findings Local politicians use financial information when they talk about financial operations and financial position of their municipality. Individual characteristics, such as political experience, affect the use of financial information. Experienced local politicians are familiar with financial information and use it more systematically than inexperienced politicians. Contrasted to expectations, financial expertise has a negative impact on financial information use. Moreover, in general, the ideology of politicians does not affect their use of financial information. Originality/value The paper sheds light on the value of individual characteristics of financial information use. It develops and tests hypotheses based on previous research on the impact of individual attributes of local politicians in the Finnish local government.


2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klea Faniko ◽  
Till Burckhardt ◽  
Oriane Sarrasin ◽  
Fabio Lorenzi-Cioldi ◽  
Siri Øyslebø Sørensen ◽  
...  

Abstract. Two studies carried out among Albanian public-sector employees examined the impact of different types of affirmative action policies (AAPs) on (counter)stereotypical perceptions of women in decision-making positions. Study 1 (N = 178) revealed that participants – especially women – perceived women in decision-making positions as more masculine (i.e., agentic) than feminine (i.e., communal). Study 2 (N = 239) showed that different types of AA had different effects on the attribution of gender stereotypes to AAP beneficiaries: Women benefiting from a quota policy were perceived as being more communal than agentic, while those benefiting from weak preferential treatment were perceived as being more agentic than communal. Furthermore, we examined how the belief that AAPs threaten men’s access to decision-making positions influenced the attribution of these traits to AAP beneficiaries. The results showed that men who reported high levels of perceived threat, as compared to men who reported low levels of perceived threat, attributed more communal than agentic traits to the beneficiaries of quotas. These findings suggest that AAPs may have created a backlash against its beneficiaries by emphasizing gender-stereotypical or counterstereotypical traits. Thus, the framing of AAPs, for instance, as a matter of enhancing organizational performance, in the process of policy making and implementation, may be a crucial tool to countering potential backlash.


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