ABSTRACT

Basing on depth interviews with six pharmaceutical representatives, two doctors and one pharmacist; and archive/literature reviews, in this reserach it is aimed to understand and reveal the function of the pharmaceutical representatives in the Turkish pharmaceutical industry, where the first twenty companies keep hold of 80% of the total market and make 90% of their total sales to the state. The interviews and reaseraches show that the pharmaceutical representatives, being an important part of employment within the pharmaceutical industry, are face to face with a double burden. They are, on the one hand, under the pressure of sales objectives to reach due to the quotas set by the companies. On the other hand, because of these quota pressures, they become the very part and also implementer of a process where unethical attıtudes are quite common. These double burden they face, lead to both “the corrosion of character” and “the socialization of cost”. In this study, the focus will be on these two issues and the sollution methods will be discussed.