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This study aims to examine consumer purchase behavior towards E-pharmacy from a consumption value perspective. For this purpose, the influence of consumption values on consumer purchase intention is evaluated. Further, the role of consumer involvement in online purchase setup in the context of E-pharmacy is observed using moderation analysis.

The study used a cross-sectional survey design, wherein the respondents in the Delhi-National Capital Region of India were approached using a purposive sampling method. Responses received through the structured questionnaire were subjected to analysis using Smart PLS Version 4.0.9.6.

Results indicate a significant influence of functional (partial), emotional, social and conditional values on consumers’ purchase intention. Moreover, the moderation effect of consumer online involvement is seen in functional value (partial) and emotional value–purchase intention relationships.

This study reinforces the use of the consumption value perspective to explain consumer purchase behavior toward information system (IS)-based platforms such as E-pharmacy. Some of the results, in this context, that did not establish significant relationships between a given form of consumption values and purchase intention, open up the possibilities of retesting the said relationships in the future. The researchers would realize the benefit of such examinations, as the E-pharmacy sector further evolves and matures in the future. Further, the successful establishment of a significant moderating role of consumer online involvement in certain consumption value-purchase intention relationships such as safety, perceived convenience and comfort value paves the way for future researchers to explore consumer online involvement for a similar role in IS research.

This study provides cues for E-pharmacy marketers to focus on enhancing product safety, usage comfort, users’ social image and awareness toward health consciousness that will help build purchase intention and assist in overcoming the challenges in the long run. It further suggests that marketers should have a strong re-look at forming price value perceptions and they must enhance the interactive features of the company’s mobile apps/websites with the help of the emerging artificial intelligence tools to re-orient the epistemic value and perceived convenience value toward E-pharmacy services. Furthermore, this study recommends following digital marketing practices to increase consumer online involvement, which would help strengthen perceived convenience formation that would otherwise be difficult to attain for E-pharmacy consumers.

This study provides novel insight into consumer purchase intention evaluation through the consumption value perspective in an emerging E-pharmacy market. The consumption value frame of reference helps to understand consumers’ buying rationale that affects their buying behavior beyond the initial adoption. Further, the moderation analysis of consumer online involvement provides an additional dimension to understanding consumer buying behavior concerning E-pharmacy.

This study aims to investigate the factors influencing the adoption of online pharmacies in Qatar using the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology-2 (UTAUT-2) framework. Specifically, this study examines the impact of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, hedonic motivation, habit, technology trust, perceived risk and users’ level of awareness of behavioral intention, which in turn affects the adoption of online pharmacies. Furthermore, this study explores the moderating role of word-of-mouth (WOM) recommendations on the relationship between behavioral intention and online pharmacy adaptation.

This study adopted a descriptive, quantitative approach to investigate the UTAUT-2 model in the context of consumers’ adoption of e-pharmacy in Qatar. Through convenience sampling, 455 responses were collected from regular customers accessing online pharmacy services. The data were analyzed using Smart-PLS 3.2 software to examine the hypothesized relationships.

The results showed that WOM recommendations significantly enhanced the relationship between behavioral intention and adopting online pharmacies in Qatar. This study identified the factors that may hinder or enable the adoption of online pharmacies, including performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, hedonic motivation, habit, technology trust, perceived risk and users’ level of awareness.

This study contributes to the existing literature on technology acceptance by extending the UTAUT-2 model and recognizing three additional variables (perceived risk, technology trust and technology awareness). These need to be investigated against UTAUT-2 variables to detect the significance of their impact on adapting the e-health concept in Qatar. The potential for cultural change to accelerate the adoption of online pharmacies is highlighted. Future research should explore the role of moral and cultural factors in technology adoption.

The results underscore the economic and social significance of e-pharmacy adoption, particularly within the context of a developing country. Considering the positive intentions expressed by individuals toward e-pharmacy, it becomes crucial for managers and decision-makers to make strategic choices to address any challenges that may arise. Policymakers are encouraged to enhance their services and implement various development initiatives to expand e-pharmacy accessibility and availability.

This study builds upon previous research on e-commerce in the pharmaceutical industry and provides a comprehensive understanding of customers in developing countries. Extending the UTAUT-2 model and identifying additional variables contributes to the knowledge of e-health concepts in Qatar. The findings have practical implications for developing strategies to promote online pharmacy adoption in Qatar and other countries.

Despite the digital penetration in the larger consumer market, the adoption of e-pharmacy services is reported to be very low in emerging economies like India. In this context, the purpose of the current study is to examine the influence of consumers’ risk perception on their intention to purchase medicines/pharmaceuticals through online pharmacies. Furthermore, the study seeks to understand to what extent the perceived usefulness of online pharmacy mediates the relationship between different dimensions of perceived risk and purchase intention.

The study was conducted among a sample of 800 consumers in India who are familiar with online e-commerce. To ensure the homogeneity of the sample and hence the generalizations of results, inclusion criteria were set as not to include respondents who have made a prior purchase through e-pharmacy services. Self-reporting questionnaires were administered among the respondents, who were selected through a purposive and convenience sampling method. Measurement modeling and path analysis were done using IBM SPSS 23.0 and AMOS 24.0 to test the hypotheses and draw inferences.

Results revealed that consumers’ risk perceptions, such as financial, product, source and privacy risks, had a significant direct and indirect effect on their intention to purchase medicines through online pharmacies. India is the major universal provider of generic medicines. The insights gained from this study can help policymakers, corporates, consumers, distributors, retailers and marketing managers to frame effective strategies for improved usage of online platforms for procuring medications.

This study is pioneering in conceptualizing and testing a theoretical model linking consumers’ risk perceptions, perceived usefulness and intention to purchase through online pharmacies, particularly in the context of an emerging economy like India. Implications regarding facilitating and nurturing a conducive platform for online purchasing medicines and its outcomes are elaborated, thus striving to fill a gap in the existing literature. By examining the proposed framework through the lens of the technology acceptance model and theory of risk perception, this study seeks to add to the emergent literature on online pharmacies, especially in emerging economies with huge market potential.

This study aims to understand the determinants of online pharmacy or epharmacy adoption among young consumers in Bangladesh using an extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model.

A structured Google Docs questionnaire was sent out to 420 respondents using messenger service; 285 useable responses were finally extracted. Data were empirically validated using the two-staged structural equation model (SEM)-neural network analysis approach.

The robustness of the classical UTAUT model remains intact in the context of online pharmacy adoption. Among the integrated variables, while perceived trust and health literacy were found significant, perceived risk and personal innovativeness were found insignificant in determining consumers’ intention to adopt online pharmacy. The neural network analysis provided further verification of these findings derived from the SEM.

The findings of this study would facilitate in devising better strategies for entering or expanding online pharmacy business in developing countries such as Bangladesh.

The originality of the current study relates to the two-fold contributions of this study. First, while this study extended the classical UTAUT model by incorporating perceived risk, perceived trust, personal innovativeness and health literacy, the inclusion of the following two variables is fresh within the extant online pharmacy literature. Second, by using a two-staged SEM-neural network analysis approach, this study advances the past studies on e-commerce adoption in pharmaceutical settings and provides a general understanding of the customers of developing countries.

Attempts to investigate the perceived advantages and risks associated with online pharmaceutical transactions, and on this basis, to propose a specific segmentation of consumers.

Analyses the marketing procedures applied by pharmaceutical sites to emphasise the specific advantages and to minimise the perception of transactional risks, as well as the segmentation techniques applied online.

The results of the study indicate the existence of four main consumer categories. This schematic categorisation needs further development, in order to define more precisely the decision taking process and the online shopping behaviour for each customer segment, as well as the level of post‐purchase satisfaction. On the other hand, the paper demonstrated that the marketing approach of various online pharmacies is determined by the transactional model applied.

The empirical analysis presented in this paper should be complemented by future qualitative study, in order to facilitate a deeper understanding of the factors determining the growing success of online pharmacies.

Up until now, some internet shopper profiles based on certain findings have been generally accepted. It is widely believed that internet shoppers tend to be more innovative, less averse to risk, more variety-seeking, more information-seeking, more impulsive and more interested in pursuing convenience. This paper aims to discuss some of these assumed characteristics by contrasting and comparing customers of three different types of pharmacies.

Three exploratory-descriptive design studies are conducted to profile customers from three different types of pharmacies in Mexico. Data from three samples are assessed, including 198 customers of physical drugstores without an e-channel, 150 customers of physical pharmacies with an e-channel and 271 customers of online pharmacies.

Shoppers from physical pharmacies purchase more food and drinks than actual medicine. Shoppers from physical pharmacies with e-channels tend to use the internet to acquire information about pharmaceutical products but do not make purchases online; they prefer to obtain products immediately from a physical drugstore instead of waiting for delivery from an e-channel. Contrasting with the two former customer types, shoppers who use e-pharmacies are specific in the numbers and types of products they purchase, medicines being the main priority.

The three types of customers and their preferred shopping platforms may show important profile differences. Despite the evidence in previous literature, shoppers at physical pharmacies are not necessarily non-convenience oriented (time and effort), noninformation analyzing, non-price conscious or less positive in their attitude about shopping; instead, they may simply be averse to technology.

This paper aims to identify and empirically validate the various factors for adoption, usage and intention to recommend e-pharmacy for purchasing medications by consumers.

Based on constructs from well-established theoretical models, the technology acceptance model, extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology and self-determination theory, a model was proposed for the study. The model was validated with a sample size of 184 respondents using partial least squares method and factor analysis to establish and validate relationships among the various identified constructs.

The results show that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and hedonic motivation have a positive co-relation with adoption of e-pharmacy and the intention to recommend. The results depict that gender and educational background have no correlation toward adoption and intention to recommend e-pharmacies for purchasing medicines in India.

This research comes along with a geographic limitation of the sample size. The research was conducted in an urban suburb city of Bengaluru, India.

At an academic level, this research will provide interesting insights for exploring adoption and usage intention of consumers toward e-pharmacy. At a managerial level, this empirically supported study will provide insights into the relationship among the various constructs and the consumers’ motivation toward adoption and usage intention of e-pharmacy.

This research is the first of its form which uses constructs from the technology acceptance model, extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology and self-determination theory in the online healthcare space to understand consumer usage behavior.

The purpose of this study is to identify patient experience unique to online pharmacy services (OPS) based on the characteristics of OPS (i.e. interactivity and virtuality) and to reveal how patient experience is derived from OPS and thereby enhances patient adherence from both online social support and patient experience perspectives.

The Stimulus-Organism-Response framework was used to conceptualize this study; both primary and secondary data for 296 validated participants were collected on a real OPS platform. A structural equation modeling approach combined with partial least squares was employed for the quantitative analysis.

Social presence and user engagement can be identified as patient experience in the OPS context; online emotional support has a stronger association with patients' social presence than it does with patients' user engagement; patients' social presence has a stronger association with their medication adherence than it does with diet adherence, while patients' user engagement has a stronger association with their diet adherence than it does with medication adherence; patients' medication knowledge negatively moderates the relationship between user engagement and diet adherence.

This study identifies patient experience in accordance with unique characteristics of OPS, and it reveals the nuanced underlying mechanisms by which online social support is associated with patient experience and by which patients' experience is associated with their adherence. This study enriches the literature on patient adherence, patient experience and OPS, providing insights for healthcare providers, OPS designers and policymakers.

The online distribution of prescription‐only pharmaceutical products raises serious legal and regulatory issues, including how governments, agencies, or organizations will regulate and monitor such activities, particularly when the distributors are offshore Web sites. This paper discusses the current regulatory environment for marketing prescription‐only drugs online and distributing them across national borders, along with product liability issues. Four hypothetical scenarios focus on key legal and regulatory issues.

This case study would enable students to understand the concept, process and advantages of mergers and acquisitions as a growth strategy with respect to 1mg. Also, the students would be able to use the threats, opportunities, weaknesses and strengths matrix to map 1mg’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

This case study analyses the transformation journey of 1mg to Tata 1mg, one of the most trusted internet pharmacies in India. This case describes a small start-up that was launched in 2013 and had made many acquisitions since then. This case revolves around Tata Digital’s purchase of 1mg. The case starts out by explaining 1mg’s financial situation and why the company was acquired. This case study focuses on how the integration helped Tata Digital and 1mg realize their respective missions. Furthermore, the case study illustrates the benefits and difficulties of this integration.

This case study is basically aimed at postgraduate management students; it can be used in strategic management and health-care courses. Students can understand the concept of diversification and acquisition with the help of this case study. Students can also gain an insight into the organic and inorganic diversification as a growth strategy.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.