Research On The Factors Influencing Consumer Trust In Online Pharmacies

In recent years, China’s e-commerce market is developing rapidly, the advantages are highlighted. Faced with the challenges and opportunities, more and more traditional industries have transformed to practice e-commerce. As one of highly standardized commodities, drugs have many characteristics suitable for online transactions. At the end of2005, the former State Food and Drug Administration issued the<Internet-based Pharmaceutical Trading Services Approval Tentative Provisions>(hereinafter referred to as the "Tentative Provisions"), which opened the online drug retail market by some strict conditions. With the gradually equipped and mature of various internal and external conditions, many pharmaceutical retail chain enterprises apply to conduct online drug retail business. However, the development of online pharmacies is not satisfactory, where the lack of consumer trust in online pharmacies is an important factor restricting its development. At present, the researchers only analyze the importance of trust in online pharmacy development qualitatively, there is no empirical researches conducted. Based on this, this paper builds an consumer trust influencing factors model in online pharmacies, to verify which factors have a significant impact on consumers trust in online pharmacies, and to provide references for online pharmacies operators to improve the marketing strategy and for the government to create a secure transaction environment.The paper used several research methods to conduct an empirical research on the factors influencing consumer trust in online pharmacies from the consumer’s point of view, including literature research, interview study, questionnaire survey, statistical analysis methods and so on. Among them, I used the method of literature research to analyze the present academic study situation of online pharmacies and e-commerce trust, to find research entry point and propose some research ideas; used the method of interview study to explore and collect possible influencing factors from the consumer’s point, combined the inductive analysis with the theory review to put forward the research hypothesis and construct the theoretical model; used the method of questionnaire survey to collect research data, and the questionnaire designed by combining with relevant maturity scales,online pharmacy industry characteristics was optimized through test investigation; used SPSS21.0to make a statistical analysis on the collected data by descriptive statistical analysis, reliability and validity analysis, factor analysis and regression analysis and verify the research hypothesis.Interview results show that, at the concerns on establishing online pharmacies consumer trust, consumer’s points can be summarized in four aspects:websites, good, service and environment. Combined with special supervision policy operated in online pharmacies and the theoretical foundation of e-commerce trust studies, the author investigates the online pharmacies consumer trust influencing factors from the above four aspects, and designs10independent variables(Website Security, Website Quality, Website Reputation, Product Feature, Express Distribution, After Service, Pharmacist Consultation, Interactive Communication, Laws and Regulations and Third Party Certification)and a dependent variable (Consumer Trust), each variable is measured by3-5related items.The empirical results show that the collected277valid questionnaire samples are with good representative, high reliability and validity and ideal data quality. There are6variables (Product Features, After Service, Interactive Communication, Website Security, Website Quality and Website Reputation) entered the regression model through the test when validate the assumption model, but the Pharmacist Consultation, Express Distribution, Laws and Regulations and Third Party Certification4variables did not pass the test. The6significant variables influencing online pharmacies consumer trust in descending order are:After Service(0.378), Interactive Communication(0.234), Product Features(0.163), Website Security(0.163), Website Quality(0.154) and Website Reputation(0.111).The studies results show that Product Features, After Service, Interactive Communication, Website Security, Website Quality and Website Reputation of the6variables are significant factors influencing consumer trust in online pharmacies. Therefore, online pharmacies operators should take improvement measures from ensuring the quality of the commodity, perfecting the after-sale services, strengthening the interactive communication, ensuring site security,improving website reputation and other measures to increase consumer’s trust on online pharmacies and promote the healthy development of China’s online pharmacy market.