The progressive impact of psychological climate: a prognosis of health care providers' subjective powerlessness in reform legislation.

This study explores the impact of psychological climate variables on the perceived powerlessness of health care providers with regard to their contribution in reform initiatives. It is proposed that perceptions of powerlessness in intra-organizational settings can and do extend to subjective powerlessness in the socio-political arena. A conceptual framework for the theoretical arguments is provided. The hypotheses were tested on survey data from health care providers employed in a major US primary metropolitan statistical area. Several highly significant relationships were observed. Since the actions of health care administrators are primarily responsible for shaping their institutions' psychological climate, recommendations regarding how administrators can foster psychological climates that induce more provider involvement in reform are offered.

A political economy perspective: why pharmacists may be reluctant to dispense generic medications.

As pressures mount for the government to intercede in the pricing structure of pharmaceutical products, some pharmacists remain reluctant to dispense generic counterparts for branded drugs. This paper attempts to explain this reticence by identifying the sources of conflict present in the pharmaceutical distribution channel. A political economy framework is applied to the pharmaceutical distribution channel to yield a basis for developing relationship management. This approach extends the pharmacist's substitution decision process from a traditional emphasis on product attributes to the complexity of the health care channel relationship itself. Relationship management offers several insights regarding how to reduce the conflict that inherently accompanies the generic substitution decision.

An investigation of promotional mix considerations for mail-order prescriptions: facilitating the market's acceptance of a partial health care-cost remedy.

While the U.S. health care system is confronted by a daunting assortment of problems, the foremost crisis almost certainly involves the excessive costs of health care. Mail-order prescriptions offer a modest, albeit worthwhile, measure of relief from high health care costs. This study investigates the information search behaviors and product perceptions that characterize current users and nonusers of mail-order prescriptions. Implications and recommendations concerned with the development of promotional strategies for mail-order prescriptions are derived from the findings.

Future pharmacists and public initiatives to control retail drug prices: a political economy framework.

While pressures mount for public policy makers to intercede in the pricing structure of pharmaceutical products, most pharmacists remain reluctant to substitute generic equivalents for branded drugs. This study suggests that pharmacist' aversion to external factors embedded in their channel environments. An adaption of the political economy paradigm reflects the complexity of the pharmaceutical channel relationships.

The effect of consumer perceptions on generic OTC usage among the elderly.

The rise of generic alternatives to branded over-the-counter products in the U.S. posits new strategic positioning challengers to marketers. Health care marketers who employ an "imitation strategy" have captured market share by emulating market leaders' product attributes. This implicitly calls for an understanding of the influence that consumers' product perceptions have on their choice of OTC offerings. This study investigates the influence of an elderly sample's perceptions of generic OTC characteristics on their adoption behavior.

The influence of older consumers' information search activities on their use of health care innovations.

Research has yet to consider the relationship between the older consumers' information search and their use of health care innovations, despite suggestions that such a characterization may prove useful to marketing practitioners. In this investigation of a national sample of autonomous elderly consumers, distinct patterns of information search behavior are observed which distinguish adopters from nonusers of a pair of health care innovations. Implications for marketing health care innovations are discussed.

Ethical ideology and product confidence: future pharmacists' attitudes toward generic drug substitution.

The impact of generic drugs on the prescription drug market has received widespread attention in the health care and marketing disciplines. Most research to date has focused solely on market factors' effect on pharmacists' attitudes toward generic drug substitution, and little attention has been given to individual factors. The present study extends previous research using Multiple Discriminant Analysis to ascertain the importance of ethical ideology and product confidence on pharmacists' attitudes toward future generic drug substitution across a salient set of market factors. The findings suggest that these individual factors are important in profiling pharmacists' disposition toward making a generic substitution in the future.