The Effect of Online Consumers’ Risk Perception, Perceived Usefulness and Subjective Norms on Online Purchase Intention: Cross-Sectional Study on Online Pharmacy in the Context of COVID 19

ABSTRACT

Over the last decade, India has witnessed an exponential rise in the sales through e-commerce platforms. With the pandemic-related lockdowns and social distancing norms being the new normal, individuals are forced to shop online, for their day-to-day requirements. The trend has become increasingly pronounced in the last year. One such domain that has come to the fore in our fight against the epidemic is e-Pharmacy. Increasing internet penetration, e-commerce adoption, and changing consumer preferences are some of the growth drivers of e-pharmacy and the market is expected to grow at a compounded rate of 44 per cent to reach $ 4.5B by 2025 in India. However, the sector also faces several challenges like lack of trust, privacy issues, legal concerns and limited geographical presence. In the context of the lack of studies examining consumer attitude towards e-pharmacy in India, this study investigates the effects of risk perception, perceived usefulness and subjective norms on customers’ online purchase intention towards e-pharmacy. The data is collected from 490 customers across different parts of India through online and offline data collection modes, out of which 423 was the final sample size, after deleted the incomplete questionnaires. Purposive sampling was employed to select the sample respondents, and data analysis have done using statistical tool IBM SPSS. The study revealed the significant relation between risk perception and perceived usefulness towards online purchase intention while the influence of subjective norms on online purchase intention is found insignificant. Online pharmacies have shown a lot of promise in terms of enhancing pharma retail. Their continued expansion would improve the digital healthcare ecosystem and help the government to achieve its goals of providing efficient and cheap health coverage. The insights gained from this study will significantly help health marketing professionals and other stakeholders to formulate their strategies more effectively.