Understanding Sample Usage and Sampling as a Promotion Tool: State of Industry Practice and Current Research - Innovation and Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Industry - page 502

a pharmaceutical company. On the one hand, if a physician does not have enough
samples for a particular drug, he may not start a new therapy or continue an existing
therapy with that drug. Instead, he may start a new therapy using a competitor's
drug for which samples are available. On the other hand, if the physician has too
many samples available, the samples could cannibalize either new prescriptions or
renewal prescriptions of the same brand.
Sample response models are diffi cult to build for several reasons. First, samples
are frequently delivered during detailing encounters. In fact, on many occasions
samples are physician access enablers. Without sample drops, many detailing
encounters with physicians may not happen. This concurrency of sample drops and
detailing creates a challenge to disentangle the effect of sampling from the effect of
detailing. Second, a sample drop is recorded for delivery to a specifi c physician yet
the delivered samples may be shared among several physicians from the same offi ce.
Therefore, the physicians who acknowledge the receipt of samples may be identifi ed
as oversampled while other physicians within the same group practice may be iden-
tifi ed as under-sampled. Third, unlike regular prescriptions that are tracked by stan-
dard pharmacy-based prescription audits such as IMS or NDC audits, prescriptions
consisting of samples (except vouchers) do not go through a pharmacy and there is
no good physician level audit on sample usage for each physician (with the excep-
tion of ImpactRx data for a limited size panel). All these factors make it diffi cult to
build accurate sample response models. Consequently, the sampling-prescription
response is more of a black box than a detailing-prescription response relationship.
Many pharmaceutical companies have personnel dedicated to sample analysis,
planning, and operation management. Table 17.2 provides a list of sample-related
marketing research questions that frequently come up in the daily operation of phar-
maceutical companies. Some of these questions may not be effectively addressed
due to lack of data or methodology.

17.2.4 How Samples Are Delivered to Physicians

Traditionally, the majority of drug samples are physically delivered by sales reps
either during detailing visits or on sample only visits. Some companies send the
samples via mail and have sales reps obtain signatures from physicians. Some phar-
maceutical companies use independent sample distributors because of regulation
compliance or cost and effi ciency concerns. In addition to direct delivery to physi-
cians, a voucher is another way of distributing samples, which has become more
popular in recent years, especially for generic drugs. Vouchers can be provided by
pharmaceutical company sales reps or mailed by generic companies that intend to
encourage the prescription of lower priced drugs. Vouchers are redeemable in phar-
macies with the physician's approval. The pharmacies will get reimbursed for the
vouchers they fi ll. Voucher activities are generally recorded by pharmacies as regu-
lar prescription scripts without co-payment by patients.
Recently, e-Sampling (i.e., electronic sampling) has emerged as a new trend in
distributing samples to physicians. e-Sampling allows physicians to request samples