Testing the Model of Identifying the Damaging Factors of Branding in the Iranian Pharmaceutical Industry

Branding is of particular importance as a means of differentiation in the highly competitive pharmaceutical industry. In recent years, one of the several problems of the country’s pharmaceutical industry which has been less considered is the issue of branding. Different factors and obstacles have shaped the current situation. The purpose of the present study was to test the model for identifying the damaging factors of branding in the Iranian pharmaceutical industry. The present study was applied in terms of purpose and field-survey in terms of data collection. The statistical population of this study consisted of marketing experts of pharmaceutical companies that are members of Iranian Pharmaceutical Industries Syndicate and the exact number of them is unknown. Therefore, using the one-stage cluster sampling method, 67 out of 111 of companies were randomly selected, then all marketing experts in these companies were randomly chosen and 160 responses were collected. The research tool was a researcher-made questionnaire that its content validity was confirmed by experts and its reliability was verified using Cronbach’s alpha. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data in association with PLS statistical software. The findings of the present study indicated the confirmation of all damaging factors as well as all components of each factor in which contextual, structural, and finally behavioral factors, respectively, were considered as the main damaging factors of brandingin the country’s pharmaceutical industry. In addition, the overall research model had a good fit.