PERCEPTION OF HERBAL PRODUCTS, MARKETING OF HERBAL PRODUCTS AND INTENTION TO USE HERBAL PRODUCTS: A CASE OF ELDERLY PATIENTS AT SOMDECH PHRA DEBARATANA MEDICAL CENTER, FACULTY OF MEDICINE RAMATHIBODI THAILAN

Abstract

Herb is the important natural resource of the world. It is a component of food or medicine for a long time. Thai government has announced “National plan for Thai herb development” since 2017(Department of Thai traditional and alternative medicine, 2017). This plan aims to promote herbal research, development, production and consumption domestically to be self-reliant and reduce national medical expenditure. Thailand confronts the ageing society therefore herb maybe one of the medical choice for them. To understand their perception to herbal product and intention to use herbal product is important for the involving party. This cross-sectional quantitative research’s objectives were to survey the perception of the elderly patients toward herb and marketing strategy of herbal product, to survey the patients’ intention to use herbal products and to study the factoring influencing the patients’ intention to use herbal products.The population of this study was the patients who have at least one of the following diseases, Hypertension, Diabetes mellitus and Dyslipidemia. They were treated at out-patient department at Somdech Phra Debaratana Medical Center (SDMC) Faculty of Medicine Ramathibodi hospital Mahidol University. Total population was 703,000 patients and sample size was 400 patients based on Taro Yamane. The questionnaire contained 3 parts; general information, perception to marketing activities according to the marketing mix concept (4P) and lastly perception to herbal product and intention to use.The result shown that perception to Product perspective was the highest among 4P’s perception (2.48 out of 3.00) and the average perception of the respondent to herbal product was 2.41 from 3.00 which meant high perception to herbal product. While, average intention to use herbal product was 2.30/3.00 which meant moderate level of intention.The study also found that the factors influenced the intention to use herbal product were 1. Perception “using herbal product reduce medical expenditure”, 2. Perception “using herbal product can raise nation income”, 3. Perception “herbal product is useful to health”, 4. Free sample, 5. Reasonable pricing, 6. Distribution store coverage, 7. Nice distribution store, 8. Informative label/insert, 9. Premium pricing, 10. Perception “herbal product can cure the disease”, and lastly 11.Informative sales person. It also showed the R square was 0.377 which meant all of these factors predicted the intention to use herbal product at 37.7%.