Designing and Executing the Data Collection

Design and Execution of the Data Collection are the fifth and sixth phases of this research. These phases included three distinct areas of research work: the definition of the subject to be inquired, the design and method of the data collection instruments, and the selection of data analysis approach. While the two first-mentioned are detailed in this section, the data analysis approach is presented with the seventh phase, Analysis of the Empirical Data, below.

2.5.1. Definition of Subjects of Inquiry and Response Rate

A central research task was to determine the subjects of the research. This was achieved with regard to the following aspects. First, as derived from the defined Research Question, the matter in hand here was the product launches within the Swedish pharmaceutical industry where General Practitioner physicians were targeted. The second limitation was set to these product launches (registration date) during the time period

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between 1995 and 2005. The key motivation for this was to keep the product launches current in order to best reflect ongoing changes, while still representing a sufficiently large base of research subjects. Furthermore, the product should be a prescription-based ethical drug from a research-based company, which is under patent, i.e. not a generic drug.

A list of products was received from a database of all registered pharmaceutical products during in Sweden 1995-2005 (MIDAS-Database 2007b). The list included over 3500 registered products. In the database, it was possible to filter out the original brands thus eliminating the registered generic products and the products registered for parallel import.

Also, even with a filtered list, inconsistencies were identified in for example manufacturer versus the company actually selling the product, based on licensing agreements. This was identified by using the Internet and questioning companies by phone, to search for the product and validate which company it belonged to for sales and marketing in Sweden. Products that were registered but not sold by a sales force or had no sales were eliminated. Molecules that were launched under different brand names were retained. The rationale is that the product might have used a different sales force, had a different launch timing, etc.

The list now included 247 original brands that were identified to have been launched in Sweden with an active sales force during 1995-2005. To find the products that had been launched aimed at general practitioners, three industry experts were consulted. Two of the experts had a commercial background in the pharmaceutical industry and one had a medical director background in the pharmaceutical industry. All products identified by the experts as having a potential history of being launched towards general practitioners were included.

A final population of 79 subjects was identified for investigation in this research. These subjects were clearly-identified pharmaceutical products that had been launched in Sweden and were highly likely to have been launched with a sales force aimed at general practitioners.

To secure that the right subjects were included in the data set, a control question initiated all data collection interviews, confirming a launch towards General Practitioners with a sales force. This process further limited the population to 68 subjects.

Given that the number of product launches in the total population was not enormous, the approach selected was to make an attempt to investigate all subjects, i.e. product launches within the scope. Typically for research data collection efforts, some subjects did not respond for various reasons. Out of the total population number of 68 subjects, the

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response number was 50, giving a response rate of 74%; which is considered to be very good. The respondent representing each product launch was, at the time of launch, in a Sales Manager or equal position. There were two principal reasons for the non-responses, as understood here. Firstly, in some cases it was not possible to identify any trustworthy informants who could represent the particular product launch. In the second case, some of the identified potential informants did not want to participate. In some such instances, alternative informants were identified and inquired; however, it was not possible to do this in all of these cases.

2.5.2. Design of the Data Collection

Given the definition and identification of the population of subjects to be investigated and then that the Research Model was elaborated and defined, the foundations for the design of the data collection instruments were established. This consisted of the following stages: the design of the data collection questions, the selection of the data collection channel, and the design of the data collection procedure. Starting with the second stage, the choice of data collection channel was direct telephone interviews with the person representing the subjects, i.e. product launch. This was driven by two aspects: firstly, the aspiration to collect high quality data, limiting the cases of no full responses; secondly, as the total number of the subjects was not very great this allowed the utilization of this channel. Moving over to the third mentioned component, the data collection procedure, the following procedure was designed and utilized:

1. Establishing contact with the representative of the subject to be interviewed, via telephone

2. Establishment of an agreement regarding the representative’s participation in the inquiry and consequently the date and time for an interview

3. Execution of the interview, in which the defined data was collected, in accordance with the defined data collection questions

4. Entrance of collected data directly into a predefined Excel-file

Finally, the first-mentioned component, i.e. the data collection questions, was formulated in accordance with the Research Model, defined and based on recommendation from the interviewed experts. The model provided a set of constructs that were also validated by previous research initiatives. These constructs were transformed into questions. Section 4.4, The Research Model, lists and explores the model’s constructs and questions. The full data collection instrument can be found in Appendix 6. The questions were asked in

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English and further explained in Swedish if necessary, as the chosen data collection channel admitted this approach.