Objective: Over-The-Counter(OTC) medicine sales began since November 15, 1928. The number of people buying OTC medicines at convenience stores is increasing. Though the law compels store owners to complete 4 hours long training education about safety ...
Objective: Over-The-Counter(OTC) medicine sales began since November 15, 1928. The number of people buying OTC medicines at convenience stores is increasing. Though the law compels store owners to complete 4 hours long training education about safety assurance and quality control which is enforced by The Korean Pharmaceutical Association, sales by part-timer comprises a great portion of OTC medicine sales.
This research assures the knowledge of convenience store owner and part-timer if they’re appropriate to sell OTC medicine and if they’re surely understanding the knowledge of training education. After investigating retailor’s knowledge level, medicine consumer’s knowledge level would be compared with retailor’s knowledge level.
Methods: An Object of research is an analysis of a survey of 20 convenience store owners and 145 part-timers spread all over convenience stores which are located within a 2-kilometer radius of Pusan National University (Dongnae-gu 24 stores, Nam-gu 26 stores). Population is set as 20s and 30s who frequently visit convenience store, and 314 questionnaires of convenience store visitor who purchase OTC medicine is used for analysis.
Survey was proceed from March 24, 2016 to April 16, and filled with self-administered questionnaire.
Questionnaire was classified as questionnaire for customer and questionnaire for retailor, and questionnaire for retailor was once more classified as questionnaire for owner and questionnaire for part-timer. Questionnaire for retailor consist of 39 questions such as common properties, convenience store customer properties, experience of OTC medicine sales or distribution, experience of relevant education, and relevant knowledge, etc. Questionnaire for customer consist of 24 questions such as common properties, experience of OTC medicine purchasing, and relevant knowledge, etc.
SPSS program was used for data analysis, Student t-test and chi-square test was used for analysis.
Results: 54.1% of customer had experience of visiting convenience store only for purchasing OTC medicine, and their number of visiting averaged 3.6 times. Daily OTC medicine sales averaged 2.1 times and it showed that most of the sales was made after 6 p.m. The reason of buying OTC medicine at convenience store were “Close of the hospital or pharmacy” accounted for 48.1% and “Accessibility” accounted for 33.4%. Customer’s standard of selecting OTC medicine were “Selection by oneself without an advice” accounted for 43.6%, “Selection with an advice of professional such as doctor or pharmacist” accounted for 21.0%, “Selection with an advice of convenience store worker” accounted for 15.0%, “Selection with an advice of someone close” accounted for 10.5% and “Selection with information from the internet and advertisement” accounted for 9.5%. 53.6% of retailor who gave the advice to customer prefer to deliver the information verbally not to read the information from medicine manual. Only 26.9% of part-timer took safety education about OTC medicine, and education about stock control and disposal was entirely not implemented. 72.9% of customer explained the correct amount of dosage, but only 37.0% of retailor answered correctly (P<0.001). 80.9% of customer explained correct time for taking medicine, but only 47.9% of retailor answered correctly.
The limit of the research is an arbitrary selection of retailor and customer within restricted area. There is a restriction to generalize the result of research because this research is based on survey which miss a selection of objective one and have the possibility of including respondent’s personal tendency.
Conclusion: The research shows that about a quarter of part-timer take safety education from their store owner but education about stock control and disposal was not completed. The research shows that the knowledge level of retailor was lower than the knowledge level of customer. To make safe use of OTC medicine and prevent the side-effect of medicine, education for retailor must be tightened. It is also necessary to make consistent public relation efforts and education for OTC medicine customer.