Measuring the Efficiency of Marketing Efforts in the Indian Pharmaceutical Industry using Data Envelopment Analysis

Abstract

Pharmaceutical companies have been spending huge amount of money on marketing and promotions, sales distribution, and traveling done by the sales representatives. However, they find it difficult to directly link the returns with these efforts. This study makes an attempt to examine whether the marketing efforts have significant influence on the sales performance in the industry. It uses the DEA model (Data Envelopment Analysis) to assess the efficiency of marketing efforts by pharmaceutical companies, and uses random effects maximum likelihood panel regression to assess the significance of the impact of marketing efforts.