Pharmaceutical Product Selection: Application of AHP

Abstract

Pharmaceutical industry caters to the health care needs through manufacturing drugs that cure diseases. With retailers being one of the customers in this industry, it is imperative for any pharmaceutical companyto address the issues concerning their preferences for these drugs to remain competitive in business. This prompts us to investigate the factors that influence their decisions in selecting the pharmaceutical products. This paper aims to identify those factors and rank them through application of analytical hierarchy process (AHP) with the support of the Expert Choice Software version 11.0. In this regard, six factors are identified, namely, quality of products, availability of products, variety of products, delivery deadline, flexibility in quantity, and competitive price that affect the purchasing decision of the retailers. The result indicates that among the chosen six factors, quality of products is ranked first followed by variety of products, availability of products, flexibility in quantity, competitive price, and delivery deadline. Inconsistency level as generated by the synthesis of AHP is found to be 9% that falls below the threshold value of 10%, signifying to the acceptability of the result. The implications of the findings on the part of the pharmaceutical companies and suggestions for future research are also put forward.

An approach that combines multi-criteria decision making and simulation in new product selection

“…Kusakci [19] Endüstriyel fan seçimi problemi Fuzzy AHP ve TOPSIS Atalay ve Can [20] Belirtilen içecek ürün grubundan yeni ürün seçimi Intuitionistic Fuzzy AHP-MOORA Karadağ ve Kılıç Delice [21] Fiber optik kablo seçimi problemi Fuzzy DEMATEL, Fuzzy VIKOR, GRA ve Zero One Goal Programming Adalı ve Işık [22] Dizüstü bilgisayar seçimi problemi MULTIMOORA ve MOOSRA Elahi vd. [23] Farmasötik ürün seçimi problemi AHP Özceylan vd. [24] Makine seçimi problemi Fuzzy AHP ve PROMETHEE Sekiz mini buzdolabı tasarım alternatifinden en iyi tasarım konsepti seçimi AHP ve TOPSIS Ishizaka ve Labib [30] Yeni üretim tesislerinin seçimi The Group AHP Ordering Method birden fazla kritere dayalı olarak karar vermedeki tutarlılığı, rasyonelliği, anlaşılırlığı, hesaplama verimliliği ve her alternatif için göreceli performansı basit matematiksel işlemlerle ölçebilme yeteneğiyle öne çıkmaktadır.…”

Determining Filipino Consumers’ Criteria for Purchasing Over-the- Counter (OTC) Medicines Using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)

“…According to (Elahi et al, 2017), the pharmaceutical industries produce medications to treat illnesses; thus, it is essential that pharmaceutical companies handle the challenges linked to retailers' preferences for these medicines to remain competitive in this field. The authors investigated the elements that influence Retailers in selecting pharmaceutical products.…”

“…They ranked them by applying the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) with the support of the Expert Choice Software version 11.0. Their results show that the quality of products comes first, followed by variety, availability, quantity flexibility, reasonable pricing, and delivery deadline [9].…”

Application of Ahp Method for the Selection of Pharmaceutical Warehouse Location

“…The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is one of these techniques which is commonly preferred in the literature on warehouse location selection [3,[7][8][9][10]. Also, many studies apply AHP in the different areas of the pharmaceutical industry [11][12][13][14]. For example, Oey and Nitihardjo investigated the problem of location for a pharmaceutical company's regional postponement center via AHP [15].…”