Exploring Ethical Issues in Pharmaceutical Marketing’s Strategies: A Critical Marketing Perspective

Abstract

This study empirically explores the ethical issues with pharmaceutical marketing, which acts as a transgressor to increase inappropriate prescriptions from physicians. Marketing is used to safeguard the interests of shareholders and indoctrinate materialism in target audiences. The inquiry aims to critically examine the marketing strategies and make some drastic changes to put them on humanistic lines to produce salutary benefits to society and the public health sector. The inquirers deploy qualitative methods to scientifically understand the behaviors of marketers and physicians. They used the stratified purposive sampling technique to get data from those who had it. The constructivist grounded theory is used as a strategy of inquiry to explore the different concepts and ideas that are interconnected to form a social phenomenon. They conducted ten in-depth interviews with the selected samples. The researchers developed categories through initial coding and established relationships among them through axial coding. The analysis and interpretation of data produce a single theme, "Deceptive Marketing Strategies," which has two main categories. Each of them has three sub-categories: (unnecessary prescriptions, drug incentivization, unethical practices) and (non-adherence to clinical practice guidelines, physicians’ materialistic approach, and indiscriminate use of antibiotics) respectively. The consequence of these unethical practices is the emergence of antibiotic resistance. The study found transgressions in pharmaceutical marketing and its deceitful and unscrupulous promotional strategies, which have a compounding effect on the misuse and abuse of pharmaceuticals.