Brand salience of OTC pharmaceuticals through package appearance

Choice experiment to assess consumer attributes for a pharmaceutical product

Purpose

This study aims to identify the appropriate combination of attributes that must be present to deliver value in a new product for a pharmaceutical enterprise.

Design/methodology/approach

The application object was the Metronidazole analytical standard, using choice experiments to product attributes and price.

Findings

The practical results indicate that consumer value anticipation allows entry into the market with higher competitiveness.

Originality/value

Conceptually, it uses a value delivery approach, generally applied to large companies, in a case aimed at enterprises. In practice, for the enterprise studied, the value anticipation by the consumer allows entry into the market with higher competitiveness.

Effects of Demographic Characteristics and Consumer Behavior in the selection of Retail Pharmacies and Over-the-Counter Medicine

Aim

The study aimed to provide new insights into consumer behaviour by identifying the key demographic factors that influence the choice of pharmacy and over-the-counter (OTC) medicine.

Materials and Methods

A cross-sectional study was conducted in an urban area (Thessaloniki, Greece), surveying a convenience sample of 314 consumers with a structured questionnaire. Data analysis was conducted using the chi-square test, one-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) and Spearman's rho correlation coefficient.

Results

Respondents with a lower educational level and retired consumers tended to make their purchases in a single pharmacy (p < 0.001). Older participants were more likely to consider the pharmacy staff and additional services to be important factors (p < 0.01). Students were the only group to prefer a formal relationship with the pharmacy staff (p < 0.001). Participants with a lower educational level tended to know exactly what they would buy (p < 0.05), whereas women made more unscheduled purchases of OTCs (p < 0.05). Respondents with a higher income assigned more importance to the product's country of origin (p < 0.05) and manufacturing company (p < 0.01) and less importance to the pharmacist's opinion than those of a lower income (p < 0.05).

Conclusions

The educational level, occupation and age of consumers have a marked effect in their selection of pharmacy, and along with gender and personal income, in their choice of OTC medicine. Our findings yield implications for the management of community pharmacies.

Attitude and Purchase Intention to Generic Drugs

Generic drugs were instituted in 1984 in the United States. Since that time, many studies have been conducted in several countries into consumer attitude and behavior when purchasing generic drugs. Understanding the factors that can influence attitude and purchasing intention in this segment has been a challenge. Thus, this paper aims to present a mapping of the literature on the attitude toward and intention to purchase generic drugs and capture insights that can help define and improve promotional strategies for the use of these products. To identify articles related to the theme, we selected the Web of Science, Science Direct, Scopus, Lilacs, Pubmed Central, Springer, and Embase databases time limited to June 2020, using the keywords “generic drug”, “purchase intention”, and “attitude”. The results indicate that this topic is relatively new, with publications in the leading journals in the area demonstrating its importance. Analysis revealed five strategic insights and showed that the research theme could be grouped into three clusters: (i) consumer attitude and behavior, (ii) perspective of patients and health professionals, and (iii) assessment of the risks associated with generic medications to determine which factors can influence purchase intention, providing decision makers with a broader view with regard to directing public policy strategies in healthcare.

The risk-value trade-off: price and brand information impact consumers' intentions to purchase OTC drugs

Background

European countries face fiscal pressure regarding the long-term sustainability of their healthcare system due to increasing levels of public health expenditures and mounting demographic pressures. The promotion of generic drugs is considered to be an efficient means to tackle these challenges; however, market diffusion remains slow. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of price and brand cues on purchase intentions by means of Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) advertising, and to build on the market cue evaluation model by Dodd et al.

Methods

Participants rated purchase intentions on six DTC adverts varying in price and brand information, followed by self-reports on purchase intentions, attitudes towards generics, brand loyalty, price consciousness, as well as perceptions of quality, risk and value. Open-ended questions explored attitudes toward generic drugs.

Results

Brand information and purchase intentions were mediated by perceived risk and perceived quality, while price information influenced purchase intention through perceptions of quality, risk and value. Consumers’ purchase behaviour was furthermore  influenced by unawareness and misconceptions, past experiences, and advertising as a decision-making tool.

Conclusions

Advertisements, including price and brand information, are an important tool to improve consumers’ awareness of the availability of different OTC drugs. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

The Effect of Ingredient Item Depiction on the Packaging Frontal View on Pre- and Post-Consumption Product Evaluations

The current research focused on the (in)congruity between pictorial (ingredient item depiction) and textual (ingredient list) information on food packaging, namely, an apple–mango juice. Specifically, the influence of these information sources on expected and perceived flavor intensities, mismatched perceptions, perceived deception, and intention to purchase was studied by taking into account the possible moderating role of consumers’ thinking style. Three studies were performed, the first and third at a Dutch University by means of surveys and sensory tests, and the second via an online survey. The results showed that, overall, most consumers did not perceive the incongruity between pictorial and textual information as mismatching. However, a perceived mismatch from packaging, whether originated by the design manipulations or not, did increase perceived deception and lowered willingness to purchase. This effect was robust for both mismatches, among packaging elements (pre-consumption) and from expected and perceived flavor ratios (post-consumption), but was more substantial for the post-consumption mismatch. Although the moderating effect of cognitive processing style regarding expected and perceived flavor ratios from pictorial and textual (ingredient list) information was not confirmed, the results indicated that the effect of salient textual information is substantial, independent of a particular processing style or label usage.