A automedicação e a influência de grupos de referência: aplicação da técnica de análise discriminante no mercado de medicamentos over-the-counter

Abstract

The consumption of non-prescribed medicines, known as over-the-counter (OTC), has increased the sales in retail pharmacy in Brazil. Due to this growth, this paper tried to analyze this phenomenon through the studies of interpersonal influence that was made so far in marketing. Thus, as objective, it was proposed to identify the key factors that make it possible to discriminate consumers who use OTC medicines or not self-medication. Due to this, self-medication was studied as a phenomenon in which the consumer receives or not some information for the decision making, instead of receiving information by a healthcare professional. Thus, the collected information was from two distinct groups: people who say they receive interpersonal influence (1) and people who say they do not receive interpersonal influence (0). Soon after, this information was inserted into a database and analyzed within the set of techniques that was part of the discriminant analysis. As a result, the variables that demonstrated not to discriminate these groups were: the influence of pharmacists and attendants. On the other hand, the variables that discriminate clusters, using equation, were: other medicine’s recommendation, brand (both with low discrimination power), taste other drugs and the influence of advertising (both with high discrimination power).