Original article

Journal of Medical Marketing

13(2) 93101
Factor analysis on marketing mix ! The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1745790413488778
online pharmacies in China mmj.sagepub.com

Ling Su1, Ting Li1, Yuanjia Hu2 and Jinyan Chen3

Abstract
This article introduces the development of the online pharmacies in China and analyzes the marketing mix
strategies of product, price, place and promotion, which are widely implemented by online pharmacies
(n 44) in China. The perception and acceptance of consumers toward marketing mix of online pharmacies
in China by software SPSS 13.0 is also surveyed in this study. Lastly this article builds a marketing mix model
of online pharmacies and derives seven common factors from the 37 marketing mix factors, namely, personal
sales and service, payment method channel, price, sales promotion, OTC drugs and health foods, non-drugs
and advertising.

Keywords
Online pharmacies, marketing mix, exploratory factor analysis

These qualified online pharmacies explore online mar-

Introduction
Development of online pharmacies in China
There are a large number of online consumers in
China. Over the past decade, Internet users in China
have reached 513 million in total. In 2011, there were
55.8 million new Internet users. The Internet penetra-
tion rate increased by 4% and rose to 38.3%. Online
shoppers increased by 20.8% and reached 194 million,
and accordingly, online payment increased by 21.6%
and reached 167 million in 2011.1
In 2005, China began to implement Provisional
Regulations of Drug Transaction Service Approval
over the Internet, which stipulates that only retail
chain pharmacies are eligible to apply for setting up
an online pharmacy.2 The first online pharmacy was
set up at the end of 2005, thereafter, 54 online pharma-
cies were approved by the Provincial Food and Drug
Administration by the end of 2011.3 More and more
retail chain pharmacies in China began to pay attention
to the business model of online pharmacies and actively
apply for the qualifications of online pharmacies.
Current situation of marketing mix of online
pharmacies in China
Up to the end of 2011, 46 of the 54 qualified online
pharmacies in China have started online transactions.
keting mix actively, and expand online promotion con-
stantly to attract more and more online orders. About
44 of the 46 qualified online pharmacies were selected,
and the other 2 were eliminated, which only sold in-
house manufactured products. We visited the websites
of the 44 qualified online pharmacies and tried to ana-
lyze and summarize their online marketing mix strate-
gies of 4Ps (product, price, place and promotion).
Product strategies of the 44 qualified online
pharmacies. About 44 qualified online pharmacies
sell western medicine, Chinese traditional medicine
and sexual products, 43 sell prepared slices of
Chinese crude drugs, health foods, cosmetics and toi-
letries, and medical devices, 36 sell fertility products
and 19 sell sundry items. Figure 1 shows the product
strategies of the 44 qualified online pharmacies.
1
Pharmacy College, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China
2
Institute of Chinese Medical Sciences, University of Macau, Taipa,
Macao, China
3
The First Affiliated Hospital of Jinan University, Guangzhou,
China
Corresponding author:
Ling Su, Pharmacy College, Jinan University, 601 Huangpu Daodao
West, Guangzhou 510632, China.
Email: 38105596@163.com
94 Journal of Medical Marketing 13(2)

Sundry Items 19

Fertility Products 36

Sexual Products 44

Medical Devices 43

Cosmetics and Toiletries 43

Health Foods 43

Prepared slices of Chinese crude drugs 43

Chinese traditional medicine 44

Western Medicines 44

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

Figure 1. Product strategies of the 44 qualified online pharmacies in China.

Coupon 13

Group purchase 10

Membership benefit 35

Discount 44

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

Figure 2. Price strategies of the 44 qualified online pharmacies in China.

Price strategies of the 44 qualified online
pharmacies. In total, 44 qualified online pharmacies
offer discount, 35 offer membership benefits, 10 offer
group purchases and 13 offer coupons. Figure 2 shows
the price strategies of 44 qualified online pharmacies.
Place strategies of the 44 qualified online
pharmacies. In all, 43 qualified online pharmacies
allow online payment, 38 allow bank deposits,
12 allow postal remittances, 37 allow cash on delivery,
17 allow cash-and-carry and 6 allow deposit payment.
Figure 3 shows the place strategies of 44 qualified
online pharmacies.
Promotion strategies of the 44 qualified online
pharmacies. Personal selling and service, sales pro-
motion and advertising were concerned. About
44 qualified online pharmacies offer hotline, 33
offer online service, 5 offer online pharmacists,
11 offer online message, 24 offer health information,
25 offer free delivery, 44 offer free returns; 32 offer
sales list, 44 offer hot-sale recommendation, 32 offer
new product recommendation, 34 offer brand monop-
oly; 44 offer animated advertising and 27 offer related
websites recommendation. Figure 4 shows the promo-
tion strategies of the 44 qualified online pharmacies.
Research methods and questionnaire
design
The preceding discussion shows the statistics and ana-
lysis of marketing mix of the 44 qualified online phar-
macies in China. A questionnaire was designed to
explore the consumers acceptance for the elements
Su et al. 95

Deposit payment 6

Cash-and-carry 17

Cash on Delivery 37

Postal Remittances 12

Bank Deposits 38

Online Payment 43

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

Figure 3. Place strategies of the 44 qualified online pharmacies in China.

Related websites recommendation 27

Animated advertising 44

Brand monopoly 34

New commodities recommendation 32

Hot-sale recommendation 44

Sales list 32

Free returns 44

Free delivery 25

Health information 24

Online message 11

Online pharmacists 5

Online contact staff 33

Hotline 44
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

Figure 4. Promotion strategies of the 44 qualified online pharmacies in China.

of the marketing mix of online pharmacies which are
widely used by the 44 qualified online pharmacies
from the consumers perspective. Then an exploratory
factor analysis was done to build a marketing mix
model of online pharmacies.
The questionnaire was based on 5-point Likert
scale ranging from Agree to Disagree. The ques-
tionnaire included two main sections. One was the
consumer survey, whose purpose was to find out the
consumers Internet experiences, the situation of
online shopping and online drug purchases. The
other was the elements survey, whose purpose was to
find out the consumers acceptance for the marketing
mix of online pharmacies.
First, the acceptance of consumers for the elements
of product (A1 to A11) includes western medicine
(prescription drugs), Chinese traditional medicine
(prescription drugs), western medicine (OTC drugs),
Chinese traditional medicine (OTC drugs), prepared
slices of Chinese crude drugs, medical devices, health
foods, cosmetics and toiletries, sexual products, fertil-
ity products, and sundry items.
Second, the acceptance of consumers for the elem-
ents of price (B1 to B6) includes discount, member-
ship benefit, group purchase, and coupon.
Third, the acceptance of consumers for the elem-
ents of place (C1 to C8), includes online payment,
bank deposits, postal remittances, cash on delivery,
96
cash-and-carry, deposit payment, phone card pay-
ments and insurance card payment.
Fourth, the acceptance of consumers for the elem-
ents of the promotion (D1 to F3) includes personal
selling and service, sales promotion and advertising.
Personal selling and service includes hotline, online
service, online pharmacists, online physicians,
online message, email consultation, health informa-
tion, free delivery, and free returns. Sales promotion
includes sales list, hot-sale recommendation, new
products recommendation, brand monopoly, and
gifts presentation. Advertising includes animated
advertising, email marketing, and related websites
recommendation.
Data analysis and factor analysis
Data collection
In China, there are more than 194 million online shop-
pers, and most of them are young consumers. More
and more consumers are keen on online shopping, but
few consumers know any online pharmacy and have
experience of buying drugs online. We selected some
medicine, pharmacy undergraduate and graduate stu-
dents who are appropriate to be selected as question-
naire respondents, because most of them have
medicine background and online shopping experience,
and can understand the questionnaires very well.
A total of 500 questionnaires were distributed, and
386 questionnaires were returned, the response rate
was 77.2%. 58 questionnaires were eliminated due to
data deficiency, the final sample was therefore made
up of 328 respondents, and the effective rate was
85.0%. Factor analysis was used to identify the under-
lying factors.
First the missing value was dealt. Among the 328
effective questionnaires, 35 of them had a small
amount of missing data, and the lack rate was
10.7%. Of the 40 items, single item was missing for
4 cases at the most, the maximum missing rate of
single item was 1.0%. All of the 13,120 data points,
76 of them was missing, and the missing rate
was 0.58%, much lower than 510%,4 the lack of
proportion was somewhat acceptable. The missing
data was checked and no significant regularity was
found, the data was missing randomly and would
not influence the research. Since the miss rate was
low, and the data were missing randomly, the effects
of different treatment methods of missing values were
very similar; the maximum likelihood method would
not influence the analysis result very much. So the
missing data was dealt by the maximum likelihood
method.
Journal of Medical Marketing 13(2)
Table 1. Demographic characteristics of the respondents,
N 393
1. Internet experience
Less than 1 year 5%
1 to 2 year 7%
3 to 4 year 53%
More than 5 year 35%
2. Online shopping experience
Never 8%
Occasional 64%
Often 28%
3. Whether have visited any qualified online pharmacies
in China
Yes 9%
No 91%
4. Whether have purchased drug online
Yes 2%
No 98%
Sample frame
About 88% of the respondents had Internet experi-
ences of over 3 years, and 92% of the respondents
had experiences of online shopping. The respondents
had certain knowledge about medicines and experi-
ence of online shopping, so they could respond well
for the elements of marketing mix of online pharma-
cies. In all, 92% of the respondents had never
visited any website of qualified online pharmacies in
China, and 98% of the respondents had never bought
drugs online, which showed that online pharmacies
were unusual for most consumers, and the marketing
mix of them needed continuous exploration and val-
idation. Table 1 shows the details of the sample
frame.
Analytical techniques
Analysis of reliability. Reliability analysis (Cronbachs
alpha and Corrected Item Total Correlation, CITC)
was conducted to test the reliability of collected data.
The alpha coefficient was 0.932, which was considered
acceptable as an indication of reliability for basic
research.
The CITC of most measured value were higher
than 0.4 and decreased after deleting the item which
implied the reliability decreases. The CITC values of
A1, A2 and A11 were significantly less than 0.4, the
alpha coefficient of the dimension increased after
deleting A1 or A11, but it did not change after deleting
A2. So A1, A2, and A11 were deleted; the CITC
values of all measured values were above 0.4, and the
alpha coefficient of the dimension increased from
Su et al.
0.778 to 0.819. The internal data consistency
significantly improved in the overall data of the
questionnaires. The internal consistency also
increased from 0.932 to 0.942, which implied that
the reliability was better after removing A1, A2, and
A11. Table 2 shows the result of descriptive statistics
and reliability test.
KMO and Bartlett test. Since there were prerequisites
to be obtained in exploratory factor analysis, before
proceeding to the results, two tests justifying the
appropriateness of exploratory factor analysis
were considered: KaiserMeyerOlkin (KMO) test of
sampling adequacy and Bartlett test of sphericity. The
KMO of the entire questionnaire was 0.901, and the
KMO of product, price, place, personal selling and
service, sales promotion and advertising were 0.738,
0.830, 0.850, 0.885, 0.870 and 0.644, respectively;
all were close to or above 0.7. The p-value of Bartlett
test sphericity of entire questionnaire was 0.000, less
than 0.001. So the sampling was suitable for factor
analysis.
Exploratory factor analysis. Principal component
analysis extraction method with orthogonal Varimax
rotation was used to determine the factor loading and
communalities. The communalities ranged from
0.455 to 0.850, which implied that the variances of
the original values were fairly explained by the
common factors. After Varimax rotation, 7 factors
retained and explained more than 66% of the vari-
ance with eight values greater than 1.0. The results of
the factor analysis produced a clean factor structure
with relatively high loadings for the factors. Most
variables had strong loadings on one factor, which
reflected that there were minimal cross-loadings,
and all factors were independently structured. The
higher loadings signaled the correlations of the vari-
ables with the factors on which they were loaded.
The results showed that the alpha coefficients of the
six factors ranged from 0.704 to 0.914, well above
the minimum value of 0.50, which was considered
acceptable as an indication of reliability for basic
research. Table 3 shows the final results of the
exploratory factor analysis.
After the factor analysis, four dimensions were
split into seven factors. We renamed the seven factors
according to the variance percentage from high to
low: F1: Personal selling and service (13.696%),
F2: Payment method (11.923%), F3: Price
(11.010%), F4: Sales promotion (10.950%), F5:
OTC drugs and health foods (6.980%), F6:
Non-drugs (6.472%), F7: Advertising (5.009%).
Figure 5 shows the seven influence factors of market-
ing mix of online pharmacies.
97
Discussion and suggestion
Seven common factors were derived from exploratory
factor analysis. From the rotated factor matrix by
the exploratory factor analysis, each factor score equa-
tion was obtained. Product dimension in the question-
naire was split into two common factors: OTC
drugs and health foods and non-drugs. Promotion
dimension was divided into three factors: personal
selling and service, sales promotion, and adver-
tising. Therefore a conclusion was drawn that OTC
drugs and health foods, non-drugs, payment
method, price, personal selling and service, sales
promotion, and advertising are the most important
influence factors of marketing mix for online
pharmacies.
Strengthening personal selling and service
Personal selling and service is the first important
factor. In personnel sales and service dimension, hot-
line (0.154), online contact staff (0.208), online
pharmacists (0.224), online physicians (0.208),
online message (0.194), health information (0.177),
free delivery (0.110), free returns (0.181), and cash
on delivery (0.109) are high factor score coefficients,
and exerted a tremendous influence on this dimension.
Based on the score coefficients, the important influ-
ence factors are hotline, online contact staff, online
pharmacists, online physicians, online message,
health information, free delivery, free returns, and
cash on delivery.
Provisional Regulations of Drug Transaction
Service Approval over the Internet stipulates that
online pharmacy in China should have licensed
pharmacists to manage online consultations, and also
have the facilities, equipments and control system to
keep the contents of consultation.2 At present, most
qualified online pharmacies offer online consultation,
and the consultations are offered by phone or Internet.
It is difficult for consumers and supervisors to verify if
the consultation services are actually offered by a
licensed pharmacist. The consumers may suspect if
the consultations are offered by pharmacists and by
which pharmacist. Online pharmacies should improve
the professional level and credibility of personal ser-
vices, especially hotline, online contact staff, online
pharmacists, online physicians, and online message
offered by the professional person and contact staff.
Professional services may give consumers professional
medication instruction and online shopping guide, and
bring a satisfactory online shopping experience for
consumers, which can attract consumers to purchase
drugs in online pharmacies instead of brick and mortar
pharmacies.
98 Journal of Medical Marketing 13(2)

Table 2. Result of descriptive statistics and reliability test

Consumers perception Corrected

item-total
The factors of marketing mix of online pharmacies Mean S.D. CITC correlation

Product 0.778
A1 Western medicine (Prescription) 2.28 1.107 0.263 0.780
A2 Chinese traditional medicine (Prescription) 2.44 1.145 0.309 0.775
A3 Western medicine (OTC drugs) 3.59 1.031 0.446 0.759
A4 Chinese traditional medicine (OTC drugs) 3.51 1.049 0.505 0.752
A5 Prepared slices of Chinese crude drugs 3.57 1.008 0.574 0.745
A6 Health foods 3.90 .943 0.546 0.749
A7 Cosmetics and toiletries 3.88 .992 0.414 0.762
A8 Medical devices 3.47 1.154 0.518 0.749
A9 Sexual products 3.76 .977 0.464 0.757
A10 Fertility products 3.44 1.200 0.540 0.746
A11 Sundry items 3.81 1.209 0.218 0.787
Price 0.906
B1 Discount 4.20 0.856 0.731 0.892
B2 Membership benefit 4.20 0.851 0.784 0.882
B3 Group purchase 4.12 0.993 0.774 0.883
B4 Discount up to certain amount 4.08 0.972 0.793 0.878
B5 Coupon 4.07 0.983 0.745 0.889
Place Payment 0.896
C1 Online payment 4.34 0.860 0.676 0.884
C2 Bank deposits 4.00 0.983 0.728 0.878
C3 Postal remittances 3.89 1.071 0.722 0.878
C4 Cash on delivery 4.35 0.848 0.576 0.892
C5 Cash-and-carry 3.90 1.060 0.702 0.880
C6 Deposit payment 3.64 1.100 0.691 0.881
C7 Phone card payments 3.71 1.106 0.706 0.880
C8 Insurance card payment 3.99 1.030 0.625 0.888
Promotion Personnel selling and service 0.892
D1 Hotline 4.34 0.840 0.646 0.881
D2 Online contact staff 4.43 0.783 0.777 0.869
D3 Online pharmacists 4.40 0.843 0.749 0.871
D4 Online physicians 4.33 0.896 0.698 0.876
D5 Online message 4.38 0.815 0.745 0.871
D6 Health information 4.34 0.868 0.557 0.889
D7 Free delivery 4.40 0.826 0.641 0.881
D8 Free returns 4.34 0.918 0.565 0.889
Promotion Sales promotion 0.914
E1 Sales list 3.80 1.134 0.715 0.908
E2 Hot-sale recommendation 3.65 1.164 0.842 0.882
E3 New commodities recommendation 3.61 1.170 0.852 0.879
E4 Brand monopoly 3.73 1.156 0.783 0.894
E5 Gifts presentation 3.75 1.127 0.711 0.908
Promotion Advertising 0.704
F1 Animated advertising 3.48 1.139 0.525 0.610
F2 Email marketing 3.47 1.144 0.599 0.509
F3 Related websites 3.92 0.982 0.450 0.696
Su et al. 99

Table 3. Final results of the exploratory factor analysis

The factors of the marketing mix Factor Eigen Variance

of online pharmacies loading value explained Communalities

Product OTC drugs and health foods

A3 Western medicine (OTC drugs) 0.855 2.583 6.980 0.778
A4 Chinese traditional medicine (OTC drugs) 0.874 0.830
A5 Prepared slices of Chinese crude drugs 0.749 0.659
A6 Health foods 0.502 0.593
Product Non-drugs
A7 Cosmetics and toiletries 0.531 2.395 6.472 0.475
A8 Medical devices 0.686 0.553
A9 Sexual products 0.741 0.633
A10 Fertility products 0.751 0.651
Price
B1 Discount 0.712 4.074 11.010 0.674
B2 Membership benefit 0.745 0.745
B3 Group purchase 0.771 0.746
B4 Discount up to certain amount 0.772 0.741
B5 Coupon 0.722 0.692
Place Payment method
C1 Online payment 0.576 4.412 11.923 0.601
C2 Bank deposits 0.706 0.686
C3 Postal remittances 0.733 0.682
C5 Cash-and-carry 0.704 0.632
C6 Deposit payment 0.734 0.655
C7 Phone card payments 0.765 0.669
C8 Insurance card payment 0.641 0.586
Promotion Personnel selling and service
D1 Hotline 0.643 5.067 13.696 0.577
D2 Online contact staff 0.780 0.716
D3 Online pharmacists 0.789 0.687
D4 Online physicians 0.744 0.658
D5 Online message 0.744 0.670
D6 Health information 0.623 0.508
D7 Free delivery 0.582 0.646
D8 Free returns 0.635 0.505
C4 Cash on delivery 0.577 0.605
Promotion Sales promotion
E1 Sales list 0.800 4.051 10.950 0.690
E2 Hot-sale recommendation 0.842 0.795
E3 New commodities recommendation 0.844 0.824
E4 Brand monopoly 0.788 0.726
E5 Gifts presentation 0.704 0.679
Promotion Advertising
F1 Animated advertising 0.576 1.853 5.009 0.618
F2 Email marketing 0.738 0.675
F3 Related websites 0.679 0.572
100
OTC drugs and health foods
Product
Non-drugs
Price Price
Place Payment method
Personal selling and service
Promotion
Sales Promotion
Advertising
Figure 5. Seven influence factors of marketing mix of
online pharmacies.
Online pharmacies should strengthen the special-
ization by showing some useful health information
on the websites to help consumers acquire general
health knowledge. Health information can attract con-
sumers to visit the websites of online pharmacy and
increase probability of online purchase.
Online pharmacies should strengthen service sup-
port of free delivery, free returns, and cash on delivery.
Delivery service and return service influence con-
sumers online purchase decision very much. Online
pharmacies should as much as possible relieve the
expense of delivery and returns, and facilitate the pro-
cess of delivery and returns, to increase the probability
of online drugs purchase.
Perfecting payment method
Payment method is the second important factor.
In payment method dimension, online payment
(0.142), bank deposits (0.216), postal remittances
(0.233), cash-and-carry (0.216), deposit payment
(0.236), phone card payments (0.257), and insurance
card payment (0.204) are high factor score coeffi-
cients, and exerted a tremendous influence on this
dimension. Based on the score coefficient, online pay-
ment, bank deposits, postal remittances, cash-and-
carry, deposit payment, phone card payment, and
insurance card payment are the important influence
factors. Payment method influences consumers
online purchase decision very much. Online pharma-
cies should offer various payment methods, which can
meet different payment habits of consumers to
increase the probability of online drugs purchase.
Phone card payment is a convenient payment
method for consumers although is still not provided
by any online pharmacies. Insurance card payment is
not allowed by Chinese government because of policy
and technology, but it is an important purchase factor
Journal of Medical Marketing 13(2)
for consumers with medical insurance. The high-speed
F5 developing period for the online pharmacies in China
will come once insurance card online payment is
F6 realized.
F3
Reducing price
F2
Price is the third important factor. In price dimen-
F1
sion, discount (0.233), membership benefit (0.242),
group purchase (0.275), discount up to certain
F4 amount (0.275), and coupon (0.243) are high factor
score coefficients, and exerted a tremendous influence
F7
on this dimension. Based on the score coefficient, dis-
count, membership benefit, group purchase, discount
up to certain amount, and coupon are the important
influence factors.
Price influences price-sensitive consumers online
purchase decision very much. Online pharmacies have
the price advantage of low operating costs and high
scale sales, so they can provide more favorable price
to attract consumer to purchase drugs in online phar-
macies instead of brick and mortar pharmacies or hos-
pital pharmacies. Drugs are special commodities with
low price elasticity. Favorable price has little impact on
consumers online drugs purchase decision compared
with non-drugs with high price elasticity, so online
pharmacies can lower the price of health foods, cos-
metics, sexual products, and fertility products.
Strengthening sales promotion
Sales promotion is the fourth important factor. In sales
promotion dimension, sales list (0.279), hot-sale rec-
ommendation (0.260), new commodities recommen-
dation (0.254), brand monopoly (0.245), and gifts
presentation (0.195) are high factor score coefficients,
and exerted a marked influence on this dimension.
Based on the score coefficients, sales list, hot-sale rec-
ommendation, new products recommendation, brand
monopoly, and gifts presentation are the most import-
ant influence factors.
Online pharmacies should enhance sales promotion
to attract more and more consumers purchase online.
Sales list, hot-sale recommendation, and new com-
modities recommendation can guide and attract con-
sumers to purchase commodities online. Brand
monopoly can facilitate consumers to purchase spe-
cific brand of commodities, and play a significant
advertising effect on the specific brand. Gifts presen-
tation can stimulate commodities purchase. Measures
for Supervision and Administration of Drug
Distribution stipulates that prescription drugs and
OTC drugs of class A should not be presented as gift
by any pharmacy.5 So OTC drugs of class B and other
non-drugs can be presented as gifts to consumers.
Su et al.
Strengthening the commodity management
OTC drugs and health foods is the fifth important
factor, In OTC and health food dimension, western
medicine (OTC drugs) (0.394), Chinese traditional
medicine (OTC drugs) (0.396), prepared slices of
Chinese crude drugs (0.319), and health foods
(0.166) are high factor score coefficients, and exerted
a tremendous influence on this dimension. Non-
drugs is the sixth important factor. In non-drugs
dimension, cosmetics and toiletries (0.239), medical
devices (0.351), sexual products (0.400), and fertility
products (0.392) are high factor score coefficients, and
exerted a tremendous influence on this dimension.
Based on the score coefficient, western medicine
(OTC drugs), Chinese traditional medicine (OTC
drugs), prepared slices of Chinese crude drugs,
health foods, cosmetics and toiletries, medical devices,
sexual products, and fertility products are the import-
ant influence factors.
Provisional Regulations of Drug Transaction
Service Approval over the Internet requires online
pharmacies only can sell OTC drugs to consumers.2
Most qualified online pharmacies in China sell
western medicine (OTC drugs), traditional
Chinese medicines (OTC drugs), prepared slices
of Chinese crude drugs, health food, cosmetics
and toiletries, medical devices, sexual products,
and fertility products. Several online pharmacies in
China sell sundry items, but based on the results of
factor analysis, sundry items are not accepted by
many consumers.
Online pharmacies have no specific limitations of
commodities sorts compared with brick and mortar
pharmacies except prescription drugs, and the com-
modities sorts can expand without limit. Online phar-
macies can as much as increase the health-related
commodities to attract the consumers who like one-
stop shopping.
Improving the advertising effect
Advertising is the seventh important factor. In adver-
tising dimension, animated advertising (0.319) email
101
marketing (0.465), and related websites recommenda-
tion (0.447) are high factor score coefficients, and
exerted a tremendous influence on this dimension.
Based on the score coefficient, animated advertising,
email marketing, and related websites recommenda-
tion are the important influence factors.
The score coefficient of advertising is the lowest
factor, which shows that consumers are little influ-
enced by advertising during shopping. Online pharma-
cies can increase the credibility of advertising, send
email advertising toward specific consumers, and rec-
ommend useful health-related websites needed by
consumers.
Summary
We suggest online pharmacies focus more on OTC
drugs and health foods, non-drugs, payment method,
price, personal selling and service, sales promotion,
and advertising when they design marketing mix
strategies.
Funding
Thanks for the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central
Universities of China. Thanks for financial support of the
University of Macau by the project MYRG119(Y1-L3)-
ICMS12-HYJ.
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.