Marketing strategies of the pharmaceutical industry and drug consumption

Abstract

The overuse of manufactured drugs plays an important role in the process of the growing intervention of Medicine (the phenomenon called "medicalization"). Among the different promotional practices used by pharmaceutical manufacturers to increase their profits - by means of the stimulation of the use of drugs advertising directed specially at physicians is particularly prominent. Notwithstanding drugs sold "over the counter", the use of which also depends, in great measure, in the last analysis, on the legitimation given them by physicians, these latter are responsible, through their prescriptions, for the larger part of all drug consumption. An attempt is made a critical analysis of the role of advertising, highlighting the role of drug companies' representatives and their efficacy as the means favored by manufacturers in their attempts to influence physicians' prescription habits. In this way the pharmaceutical industry looks after its own interests to the detriment of those of the patient.