Sales force allocation in pharmaceutical industry in presence of social contagion

In this paper we deal with the influence of social contagion on the sales representative allocation problem for a pharmaceutical company. First of all, we present a heuristic algorithm that defines the number of calls for each drug to each physician, taking into account a call budget, a set of specific response functions, and the network of possible relationships among physicians. Because social contagion is a phenomenon inherently affected by uncertainty, we develop a methodology for the evaluation of the sales force allocation strategy taking into account the uncertainty and partial knowledge that may characterize the structure of the physician social network that regulates the information flow. We also analyze the impact of this partial knowledge on revenues generated by a call plan thus enabling the measurement of the information value.