BEYOND BRAND AWARENESS: THE INFLUENCE OF CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY PERFORMANCE AND COGNITIVE FLUENCY ON PHARMACEUTICAL BRAND EQUITY AND PRESCRIPTION INTENTIONS IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

The existing body of knowledge on the pharmaceutical brand equity concentrates more on product level brand awareness as the antecedent of prescription behavior among healthcare providers. Using the Processing Fluency Theory, Signaling Theory, Legitimacy Theory, and Value-Belief-Norm Theory, the paper presents an original Dual-Pathway Model of Pharmaceutical Brand Choice as an extension of the conceptual structure of Jain and Kaini (2021). This model suggests two mutually exclusive pathways of brand perceptions: (1) a cognitive pathway where brand awareness creates cognitive fluency, which subsequently increases brand equity; and (2) an ethical pathway where corporate sustainability performance (CSP) a non-financial disclosure measure based on accounting signals corporate ethicality to prescribing physicians, increases brand equity. Professional altruism is the theorized and empirically tested moderating role that enhances the value-based physician ethical pathway. The survey was a quantitative survey based on scenarios and administered to N = 347 General Practitioners and specialists in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad, Pakistan, and analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). All six main hypotheses, two indirect (mediation) and one moderated mediation are proven by empirical data. The research will add to the marketing-accounting interface, which relates macro-level reporting of corporate sustainability to the micro-level prescriptive actions of individual clinicians, a relationship that is seldom analyzed within either field. Results provide two-track brand investment advice to pharmaceutical firms in the developing market environments.