Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess medicines information sources accessed by clinicians, if sources differed in theory and practice and to find out the barriers and facilitators to effective guideline adoption. Design/methodology/approach In all, 183 doctors were surveyed. Barriers and facilitators were classified as: communication; potential adopters; innovation; organization characteristics and environmental/social/economic context. Findings Most of the clinicians accessed multiple information sources including standard treatment guidelines, but also consulted seniors/colleagues in practice. The top three factors influencing clinical practice guideline adoption were innovation characteristics, environmental context and individual characteristics. The respondents differed in the following areas: concerns about flexibility offered by the guideline; denying patients' individuality; professional autonomy; insights into gaps in current practice and evidence-based practice; changing practices with little or no benefit. Barriers included negative staff attitudes/beliefs, guideline integration into organizational structures/processes, time/resource constraints. Fearing third parties (government and insurance companies) restricting medicines reimbursement and poor liability protection offered by the guidelines emerged as the barriers. Facilitators include aligning organizational structures/processes with the innovation; providing leadership support to guide diffusion; increasing awareness and enabling early innovation during pre/in-service training, with regular feedback on outcomes and use. Practical implications Guideline adoption in clinical practice is partly within doctors' control. There are other key prevailing factors in the local context such as environmental, social context, professional and organizational culture affecting its adoption. Organizational policy and accreditation standards necessitating adherence can serve as a driver. Originality/value This survey among clinicians, despite limitations, gives helpful insights. While favourable attitudes may be helpful, clinical adoption could be improved more effectively by targeting barriers.
Increasing costs involved in building new brands motivate marketers to adopt an alternate route for new product introductions in the form of brand extensions. While extensive research exists for understanding the intricacies of brand extensions in the Western context, there is limited understanding about its utility in the context of developing countries such as India. This study aims to identify factors contributing to the success of brand extension of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPGs) in India. Primary data collection was performed with 837 participants constituting management students of a renowned university in India. Hierarchical regression is applied to model the variables considered as major determinants for brand extension evaluation. This study is first of its kind in India explaining the inter-relationships among these variables with the help of residual centring technique for creating interaction terms leading to a better understanding of consumers' evaluation of brand extensions. Interesting results emerging from the study, having managerial implications, are discussed in detail. Attitude towards brand extension advertisement is found to be the most significant variable affecting consumers' attitude towards brand extension. While a majority of the prior studies has overstated the impact of perceptual fit, it only emerged as a significant variable along with brand trust and perceived quality. Negative interaction effect of perceived fit and trust is observed, implying that only strongly trusted brands may extend into low fitting product categories and vice versa, that is, lowly trusted brands should only extend into high fitting extensions. We believe that these implications will be useful for many of the multinational companies entering Indian markets while leveraging their equity by introducing extensions that are suited for the Indian consumers.
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