The influencers of prescription decision and the relationship between doctors ethnocentric tendencies and prescription decision

The dynamics in pharmaceutical industry have been evolved due to legislative changes, economic turmoil and increase in competition between generics and original drugs in emerging market countries like Turkey, China and Mexico (Semin et.al, 2006). Governments support local drug companies because of cost-effectiveness. Thus, the competition between local and international drugs increased in these countries. Moreover, there are some influencers effect on prescription behavior except local and global drug competition. In literature, price, active ingredient, clinical experience, producer of the drug and doctors ethnocentric tendencies have been examined as the influencing factors for prescribing behavior. This study aims to investigate the main factors affecting doctors' prescribing behavior of local and nonlocal drugs. This study examines the relation between ethnocentric tendencies and preference of local and non-local drugs in relation with doctors' generation, gender. The questionnaire for the empirical study is developed based on existing literature and scales like CETSCALE is used. Convenience sampling is used and 251 surveys were collected from doctors living in different cities of Turkey. Descriptive statistics indicate that 53% of the respondents were male and 47% were female doctors. Regarding generations, only 2.8% belong to baby boomers group, 55.8% to Gen X and 41.4% Gen Y. Fifty five percent of the respondents mentioned that their prescribing behavior is mostly affected by drugs local or non-local characteristic. According to findings Baby Boomers have more positive attitude towards prescribing non-local drugs than their younger associates. This paper aims to contribute to the existing literature with its doctor oriented perspective and relating a less researched concept; ethnocentrism, to the tendencies of prescribing local or non-local drugs.