a new marketing archetype for the information age, applied to the adoption of oral contraceptives and other drugs by end-users"

Tendo em conta o novo paradigma de comunicacao dos Midia Sociais, este artigo propoe um novo arquetipo de marketing para a era da informacao denominado "Marketing Multiplo". O estudo conduzido explora a contribuicao da utilizacao da Internet e participacao nas respetivas redes sociais, para o processo de adocao de contracetivos orais (CO) e outros medicamentos pelos proprios consumidores finais. Os dados empiricos recolhidos nesta investigacao foram coligidos a partir de uma amostra de 1.162 entrevistados de uma populacao-alvo formada por mulheres portuguesas, atuais ou potenciais utilizadoras de CO, que alcancaram um nivel de educacao universitaria. Os resultados obtidos apos a aplicacao de um conjunto de tecnicas estatisticas que envolvem estatistica descritiva, testes nao parametricos e analise multivariada mostram que a utilizacao da Internet, bem como a participacao na rede social “Facebook”, pode contribuir para o processo de adocao de CO pelas respetivas consumidoras finais. Com base em criterios que associam as tecnologias de informacao e comunicacao (TIC) com o processo de adocao de CO realizado pelas proprias consumidoras destes medicamentos, identificam-se segmentos de mercado considerados relevantes para o marketing farmaceutico. Este estudo demonstra, tambem, que o modelo de adocao e segmentacao proposto para o caso dos CO pode ser generalizado para outros mercados no sector da saude. Finalmente, considerando os resultados obtidos e o proposto "Marketing Multiplo", apresentam-se inovadoras diretrizes de marketing farmaceutico. Taking into account the new communication paradigm of Social Media this paper proposes an original marketing archetype for the information age named by the authors as “Manifold-Marketing”. The conducted study explores the contribution of participating in social networks on the Internet for the adoption process of oral contraceptives (OCs) and other drugs by their end users. Empirical data for this research was collected from a sample of 1162 respondents of a target population formed by Portuguese women, current or potential users of OCs who had reached a level of college education. The results obtained after applying a package of statistical techniques involving descriptive statistics, nonparametric tests and multivariate analysis show that the use of the Internet as well as the participation in the social network Facebook can contribute to the adoption process of OCs. Market segments which are relevant to pharmaceutical marketing were identified based on criteria that associate the information and communication technologies (ICT) with the adoption process of OCs carried out by the consumers themselves. This study also demonstrates that the adoption model and segmentation proposed can be generalized to other markets in the health sector. Considering the obtained results and the proposed "Manifold Marketing", innovative pharmaceutical marketing guidelines are presented. Palavras-chave / Keywords Marketing multiplo, Marketing na web, Marketing nas redes sociais, Marketing farmaceutico. Manifold-marketing, Web-marketing, Social media marketing, Pharmaceutical marketing.