Assessing the impact of Omni-Channel Engagement strategy on physicians’ prescribing behaviour in specialty pharmaceutical industry in emerging market

Marketers strive to create a seamless experience across all marketing channels and with the notion of ‘phygital’ marketing in mind, that is building on the powers of both physical and digital worlds, the pharmaceutical industry could boost physicians’ engagement levels and positively affect their prescribing behaviour in specialty medicine, prescribed for complicated, rare diseases. This research study is an attempt to create the ultimate Omni-Channel Engagement (OCE) strategy in the pharmaceutical industry in emerging markets, while the researcher took the Egyptian market as an example. The researcher adopted qualitative research depending on in-depth interviews with industry experts, pharmaceutical marketing managers and physicians to have a deeper insight and more comprehensive understanding of OCE strategy success factors and challenges. Communication tools that appealed to the cognitive and behavioural attitude components of physicians are more powerful in shaping physicians prescribing attitude. As the research was concerned with drugs associated with specialty pharmaceutical market, where both the disease area and the medication are complicated and hence the product (medication) is considered a high-involvement product; communication tools that affect the cognitive and behavioural components of physicians’ attitude have a higher impact on physicians’ brand engagement levels and are most likely to lead physicians to prescribe the drug. OCE has an incremental impact over the traditional promotional mix with regard to physicians’ prescribing behaviours and habits, justified by the direct impact on physicians’ cognitive and behavioural attitude components.