Satisfied customers: Profitable customer relationships: Pharmaceutical marketing: How pharmaceutical sales representatives can achieve economic success through relationship management with settled general practitioners—an empirical study

In the last few years, marketing research has been dominated by the theoretical investigation of the construct of 'customer satisfaction' by the development of adequate means of measurement and by the practical meaning of satisfaction indicators as predictors of future customer actions or as standards for the quality of a supplier-customer relationship. Moreover, links between customer satisfaction and profitable customer relationships are an increasing demand among practitioners all over the world. In an empirical study conducted in the pharmaceutical market in Austria, results show a significant relation between satisfaction rating from physicians referring to the pharma sales reps and their prescription behavior. This is seen as proof that perceived service quality can be linked to economic success criteria of companies and that relationship management works.