Customers’ preference towards e-pharmacies in Chennai City

Abstract

In the COVID-19 pandemic era, the e-pharmacy sector has been a boon to the community at large and evolved as a revolution in the digital marketplace in India. Through e-CRM software and AI tools, the e-pharmacy web portal evolves as a blockchain technology by binding up customers’ service on one side and the admin back-office system on the other side. E-pharmacies fulfilled customers’ needs such as essentials and medicines at the customers’ doorstep. Its ease of access using a smartphone, contactless delivery at the pandemic made people purchase medicines and essentials via web platforms. The transformation to e-pharmacies over conventional pharmacies created competition in the pharma industry and brought up more startups into this field. Therefore, this paper aims to study the customers’ preference towards e-pharmacies in the pandemic era and to identify the factors influencing customers’ buying intention towards e-pharmacies for online medicine purchases in Chennai city. The primary data were collected from 100 respondents using the convenience sampling technique. The data collected through a questionnaire were analysed using Weighted average method, factor analysis and chi-square test. The findings showcase the e-pharmacy customers’ viewpoints towards the existing services and preference towards e-pharmacy health line.