Suppose you are tasked with managing a healthcare marketing division for a pharmaceutical drug. A junior member of your marketing team suggests that you increase the budget to invite healthcare providers to attend symposia where they will be trained to become speakers. One of the goals of the marketing plan is to encourage doctors to prescribe the drug. The team member has draft versions of brochures and DVDs touting the benefits of the drug; these should be distributed to doctors and patients in order to boost sales. The team member also suggests that a bonus system be put in place for your sales representatives in their territories in order to increase the number of prescriptions that doctors make for the drug. (A) What are the associated ethical issues to this marketing strategy “Some of the ethical issues associated with this marketing strategy are that one of the goals of the marketing plan is to influence doctors to prescribe the drug. A lucrative bonus system encouraged salespeople to increase sales of OxyContin in their territories, resulting in large numbers of doctor visits with high rates of opioid prescriptions, as well as an information campaign multifaceted for them. In 2001, in addition to a sales representative's average annual salary of $55,000, annual bonuses averaged $71,500, with a range from $15,000 to nearly $240,000. Purdue paid $40 million in sales incentive bonuses to its sales representatives that year. From 1996 to 2000, Purdue increased its inside sales force from 318 sales representatives to 671, and its total physician call list from approximately 33,400 to 44,500 to approximately 70,500 to 94,000 physicians. Through sales representatives, Purdue uses...... middle of paper...... Expansion of the tort of negligent misrepresentation. The University of Memphis Law Review 40.1 (Fall 2009): 105-164. Retrieved December 2013 from Proquest http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.trident.edu:2048/docview/217042903/142C742B7975ABC17E0/18?accountid=28844Van Zee, Art. (2009, February). The promotion and marketing of OxyContin: commercial triumph, public health tragedy. American Journal of Public Health. 99(2), 221-227. Retrieved December 2013 from Proquest http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.trident.edu:2048/docview/215090238/142BCC1433412EFA5AA/1?accountid=28844Weber, Leonard J. (March 2006). Profits before people? : Ethical standards and marketing of prescription drugs. Bloomington, IN, USA: Indiana University Press, 2006. p 7. Retrieved December 2013 from http://site.ebrary.com.ezproxy.trident.edu:2048/lib/tourou/docDetail.action?docID=10161033