A Study on Consumer’s Cognition and Purchasing Behavior of Non-prescription Drug in Community Pharmacy of Changhua County

• Main Authors: CHEN,HSI-CHIN, 陳錫欽
• Other Authors: SHIH ,CHENG-DEAN
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/6u96un

碩士 === 大仁科技大學 === 製藥科技研究所 === 106 === Abstract Non-prescription drugs including over-the-counter drugs and instruction drugs, which doctor’s prescriptions not required, the people can be purchased at community pharmacy. In addition to dispensing the prescriptions and providing consultation of using medication at community pharmacy, the pharmacist also play a very important role in the provision of non-prescription drugs and patient’s self-medication. Because of the complexity in the types of non-prescription drug on the current market, consumers are lack of medicine cognition and medication behavior is not correct, improper choice or use of drugs caused problems of medication safety cannot be ignored. Therefore, consumers need more attention and exploration on the cognition and purchasing behavior of non-prescription drugs. This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted in consumers of community pharmacy in Changhua County. A total of 477 effective specimens using quota sampling method by way of a face-to-face interview questionnaire. The questionnaire includes four main parts: the basic demographic information, the use of non-prescription drugs, cognitive degree and purchasing behavior of non-prescription drugs. This study excludes the data from the invalid questionnaires and encoded all of the data. After organize and build the database with Microsoft Excel, and then the data were analyzed by using SPSS for Windows 22.0 Chinese version of statistical software. The results showed that consumers in Changhua County mainly purchased non-prescription drugs from pharmacies, whereas the main information sources of non-prescription drugs were recommended by relatives and friends. The consumers most often purchased non-prescription drugs were over-the-counter drugs, and the actual use of the situation was to buy their own, but also to help other friends and family to buy. The consumers in Changhua County had a higher level of efficacy cognition of non-prescription drugs than product cognition. In purchasing behavior analysis, the highest degree of recognition was the final decision, while consuming behavior was the lowest. There was a significant positive correlation between the cognition and purchasing behavior of non-prescription drugs. The cognitive level of non-prescription drugs were affected significantly by the consumer’s living area, age, education, chronic disease, monthly average income, as well as the purchase type and main motivation of non-prescription drugs. In addition, the purchasing behavior were affected significantly by the consumer’s living area, monthly average income, as well as the place of purchase, purchase type, use status and main motivation of non-prescription drugs. These results indicated that consumers generally had self-medication behavior in community pharmacy of Changhua County, Therefore, the professional pharmacists in community pharmacy should strengthen the education of the community people’s correct self-medication, rectify the concept and behavior of medication to reduce unnecessary risk of medication.