Research On The Model And Incentive Mechanism Of Drug Knowledge Transfer Process In Pharmaceutical Marketing Channels

Along with the reform of national health system and the acceleration of globalintegration process, the market competition environment that our medical enterprises arefacing has radically changed, then the development of pharmaceutical supply chain meetthe huge challenge. Pharmaceutical supply chain is not only the path of the circulation ofmedicines for pharmaceutical enterprises, but also an important channel to transferringknowledge of drug pharmacology, how-to-use drug and c clinical reactions after usage ofdrug. Due to drug’s high professional requirements and close correlation with daily life,people’s purchase and usage of drugs need the correct guidance from doctors. Therefore,when selling drugs, pharmaceutical companies should transfer drug-related knowledgeaccurately and timely to the downstream doctors through pharmaceutical marketingchannels, then doctors can enable patients to purchase the drug in the process ofprescription. On the other hand, in order to control the potential risks of drug andfacilitate drug’s improvement, the pharmaceutical company should also collect feedbackknowledge about the patients’ actual using efficacy and adverse reactions from doctorsafter drug sold in the market. In a way, the effective process of knowledge transfer is animportant means to enhance their core competitiveness for pharmaceutical enterprise,distributors, hospitals and pharmacies. In this case, how to transfer drug knowledge betterin pharmaceutical supply chain become urgent matters for the pharmaceutical enterprises.Firstly, according to the path of drug marketing and distribution, the medical supplychains have been divided into three channels: academic conferences, home visits andmedicine distribution channels. Based on the three channels, the paper established themodels of drug knowledge transfer and analyzed the characteristics of drug knowledgetransfer. In order to provide theoretical guidance to how drug knowledge passed throughthe pharmaceutical supply chains, it also put forward the corresponding strategies ofknowledge transfer in the pharmaceutical supply chain.Secondly, by using the principal-agent theory of single task, the paper studied theincentive mechanism of drug knowledge transfer from the hospital. The hospitals aremostly non-profit enterprises, do not have the enthusiasm to transferring the knowledge ofactual efficacy, patients’ adverse reactions, etc., so the pharmaceutical enterprises mustactively participate in the process of knowledge acquisition, assist hospital to transferdrug knowledge. Based on the principal-agent model, the incentive mechanism of hospital’s drug knowledge transfer with the active participation of pharmaceuticalenterprise is studied too. The following conclusion are that pharmaceutical enterprise’sparticipation behaviors can increase the efforts degree of the hospital’s drug knowledgetransfer, as an incentive method and the encouragement coefficient will be increased bythe participation of pharmaceutical enterprise when the pharmaceutical enterprise’sparticipation behaviors and the hospital’s drug knowledge transfer work arecomplementary, and vice versa.Finally, according to the fact that the pharmacy can transfer drug knowledge whenselling drugs, the paper established the incentive mechanism of two tasks to the pharmacy.As the main channel to buy drugs-OTC drugs especially-for patients, the behavior thatpharmaceutical enterprises acquire knowledge about the patients’ usage of drug frompharmacies can effectively guard against risk, improve the drug’s quality and promotedrug sales. However, pharmacies always pay full attention to drug sales, while have noenthusiasm to transferring drug knowledge without encourage. In view of this, aftercombined the two tasks of drug sales and knowledge transfer, this paper analyzed theincentive mechanism. It concludes that if each cost function of these two tasks isindependent, the optimal performance revenue of the two tasks will be also independentunder the condition of incentive compatibility; if each cost function of these two tasks isdependent and incentives are compatible, the optimal incentive contracts concerning saleswill be a “threshold-based incentive contract”, which is presented quantitatively in thispaper. At last, some practical problems, which are prevalent among enterprises in thepharmaceutical supply chain, are explained from the theoretical view combined with theconclusions from this model.