A review of the second year of IJPHM

Citation

Mukherjee, A. (2008), "A review of the second year of IJPHM", International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing, Vol. 2 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijphm.2008.32402daa.001

A review of the second year of IJPHM

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing, Volume 2, Issue 4

As IJPHM completes the second year of its publication, I devote this editorial to a reflection of the current position of the journal and its many opportunities and challenges. IJPHM has succeeded in addressing a much needed gap for a high quality publishing outlet in pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing research. IJPHM has attracted the attention of leading scholars in the discipline and has attained both quality and quantity benchmarks in manuscript submissions.

I present the current position of the journal in terms of three important questions. The statistics provided below pertain to the four journal issues published in 2008.

Is IJPHM an eclectic journal?

Articles published in IJPHM in 2008 were almost evenly split between pharmaceutical-focus (55 percent) and healthcare-focus (45 percent). The 22 articles published in 2008 can be classified into research paper (77.27 percent), literature review, technical paper, and case study (4.55 percent each), and book review (9.09 percent). There has also been a good mix of articles authored by one author (31.82 percent), two authors (22.73 percent), three authors (31.82 percent), and four authors (13.64 percent). Finally, while academicians grab the major share of authorships (78.72 percent), corporate managers have grown to 10.64 percent in the author mix, followed by authors from government (8.51 percent) and NGO (2.13 percent).

Is IJPHM an international journal?

The international nature of the published articles has grown this year compared to the previous year, with as many as eight countries represented in the country-of-author mix: USA (70 percent), Israel, Japan and Australia (6 percent each), UK and Greece (4 percent each), and finally Lebanon and Bangladesh (2 percent each). Of course, there is more work to be done in this regard. I hope to receive more publishable manuscripts from outside USA in the coming years. Further, 42 percent of the editorial board members come from outside the USA.

Is IJPHM an interdisciplinary journal?

Healthcare researchers publishing in IJPHM come from several disciplines. It gives me great pleasure to report that the journal is increasingly becoming interdisciplinary with regard to its readership as well as authorship. Just 46.34 percent of the authors in 2008 came from marketing departments. The other disciplines represented by the authors in 2008 were: healthcare administration (12.2 percent), health economics (9.76 percent), management and international business (7.32 percent each), pharmacy and information systems (4.88 percent each), and public health, operations management, and anthropology (2.44 percent each). Also, there was a good mix of scholarly as well as practice-oriented articles. To compare these numbers with those of 2007, please read my editorial in the final issue of Volume 1 (Mukherjee, 2007).

This journal issue presents an interesting ensemble of articles that make significant contributions to the field. Blackwell, Ciborowski, Baugh and Montgomery, in their article “Applying the 2003 Beers update to Medicaid/Medicare enrollees,” use Medicare and Medicaid data to examine variations in Beers drug use in the elderly dually eligible Medicare and Medicaid population. They apply the 2003 Fick et al. update of the 1997 Beers list to one of the nation’s largest sources of person-specific data on prescribed drugs. The results show a markedly higher rate of potentially inappropriate prescribing and drug use in the elderly population, specifically with Hispanics and for genitourinary products.

The second article titled “Challenges for Bangladesh to conquer avian influenza” by Haider, Ahamed and Leslie addresses the social marketing and communications efforts of Bangladesh to control Avian influenza from becoming a public health pandemic. This article assumes tremendous significance in light of the current global deliberations on avian flu.

In “Painkiller purchasing in the UK: an exploratory study of information search and product evaluation”, Paddison and Olsen present a classical consumer behavior study on the purchasing process of over-the-counter painkiller medication. Employing a qualitative research methodology, the authors uncover the involvement, inherent risk, information search, and evaluation of consumers in this important purchase decision. Managerial implications are provided based on the consumer behavior findings.

The fourth article by Carter, titled “Marketing “smart” medical innovation: physicians’ attitudes and intentions” applies the Technology Acceptance Model to explore physicians’ attitudes toward smart fabric medical innovation. A survey sample of 207 physicians is employed to test the hypotheses. Significant effects were found for the direct relationships between attitude and intention to use and between perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness.

The final article by Misra, Mukherjee and Peterson, titled “Value creation in virtual communities: the case of a healthcare website” adopts a “netnographic” approach to segmenting healthcare consumers in virtual communities. The value creation process of the different user segments is mapped against their online behavior.

We end 2008 with what one might consider an enviable position for a journal. IJPHM is now the only mainstream scholarly journal in pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing. The number of submissions has grown rapidly in the past year, as have been the article downloads and the citations. The appearance of all full-text articles in ABI-Inform (ProQuest) and Emerald Extra, as well as its listing in Cabells and Inspec will ensure that IJPHM articles enjoy unparalleled readership. I will be presenting the journal in the “Meet the Editor” sessions in two forthcoming prestigious conferences: The Society for Marketing Advances Conference in Florida and the International Conference on Health Care Systems in Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Over the next year, my objective as editor of IJPHM will be to broaden the range of articles that the journal publishes and focus on high-impact articles that reflect the cutting edge of pharmaceutical and healthcare research while being increasingly relevant to a wider range of practitioners.

As always, we will continue to look for assistance from scholars and practitioners in pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing to maintain the relevance and rigour of IJPHM as the top journal in its field. IJPHM presents the latest and the best research on pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing to a large array of readers. If you are interested in pharmaceutical and/or healthcare research, just drop me an email at editor-ijphc@mail.montclair.edu and let me know in what capacity you would like to get more involved in IJPHM – by contributing research papers, reviewing manuscripts, writing book reviews, presenting commentaries or practitioner perspectives, submitting case studies, joining the editorial board, or guest-editing a special issue. There is always something you would find of interest in this journal. And to those many individuals who have already stepped up to the plate. “Thank you”. We couldn’t do it all and well without you.

Avinandan Mukherjee

Selected reviewers for 2007-2008

Nicholas Ashill, Victoria University of Wellington, NZSubir Bandopadhyay, Indiana University Northwest, USANorman V. Carroll, Virginia commonwealth University, USAJanet Carruthers, Victoria University, New ZealandAshish Chandra, Marshall University, USAPatrali Chatterjee, Montclair State University, USAJunsong Chen, China Europe International Business School, ChinaAndrew Ching, University of Toronto, CanadaGerry Cleaves, Fairleigh Dickinson University, USAAlberto Coustasse, University of North Texas Health Science Center, USARoger Durand, University of Houston - Clear Lake, USAIke Ekeledo, Montclair State University, USAChristine Ennew, Nottingham University, UKMarianna Fotaki, Manchester Business School, UKScott Friend, Georgia State University, USAChinmoy Ghosh, University of Connecticut, USAStephen J. Gould, Baruch College, CUNY, USAMahmud Hassan, Rutgers University, USAAngela Hausman, Xavier University, USAHong Wei He, University of East Anglia, UKAnurag Hingorani, UTS, Sydney, AustraliaGillian Hogg, Strathclyde Business School, UKSharan Jagpal, Rutgers – The State University of New Jersey, USAAbhinandan Jain, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, IndiaAnand Jaiswal, IIM Ahmedabad, IndiaPer Jenster, China Europe International Business School, ChinaJill Jesson, Aston Business School, UKJoby John, Bentley College, USAMark Johnson, Montclair State University, USAG.K. Kalyanaram, GK Associates, New York, USAGregory Katz-Benichou, ESSEC, FranceMark J. Kay, Montclair State University, USANeeru Malhotra, Aston Business School, UKJohn McGinnis, Montclair State University, USASantanu Mitra, Montclair State University, USAHiroshi Nakamura, Keio Business School, JapanVivek Natarajan, Lamar University, USAPrithwiraj Nath, Nottingham University, UKPrathap Oburai, IIM Ahmedabad, IndiaMary Beth Pinto, Pennsylvania State University, USAManuel Pontes, Rowan University, USALuis San Vicente Portes, Montclair State University, USAC.V. Priporas, University Macedonia, GreeceSamuel Rabino, Northeastern University, USAP.S. Raju, University of Louisville, USAP.M. Rao, Long Island University, USAMichel Rod, Victoria University of Wellington, NZPaul Scipione, State University of New York, Geneseo, USAJulie Z. Sneath, University of South Alabama, USAG. Shainesh, IIM Bangalore, IndiaDaniel Simonet, Nanyang Technological Univ, SingaporeEugene Sivadas, University of Washington, Tacoma, USAMickey Skiba, Monmouth University, USADeborah Spake, University of South Alabama, USAHan Srinivasan, University of Connecticut, USAGeorge Stone, North Carolina A&T State University, USADilaver Tengilimoglu, Gazi University, TurkeyBill Trombetta, Saint Joseph’s University, USAYawei Wang, Montclair State University, USADaniel West, University of Scranton, USASue Weston, Montclair State University, USAJudy Zolkiewski, Manchester Business School, UKNashat Zuraikat, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA