Customers' satisfaction toward drugstore facilities and services based on the good pharmacy practice standard in Thailand

Abstract

Introduction: The Good Pharmacy Practice (GPP) standards in Thailand have been legally implemented for all drugstores since 2014. However, customer satisfaction has not been studied. This research aimed to explore the satisfaction of the customers with the facilities and services received from drugstores under the GPP standards and examine the impact of satisfaction toward each GPP domain on overall satisfaction (OS) and the intention to receive the pharmacy services as the first choice in the case of common and non-serious illnesses (IntR).

Methods: This research was a cross-sectional survey study. The Google Forms for data collection was distributed via the online social media between June and August 2021. The satisfaction toward OS, IntR, and the GPP domains; places and equipment (PE), personnel (P), quality control (QC), and pharmacy services (PS) were collected using 5-Likert scales. Descriptive statistics, intra-class correlation, and multiple regression were used in data analysis with statistical significance at p-value<0.05.

Results: Three hundred and eighty-eight drugstore's customers responded to the questionnaires. Most customers rated the OS and the IntR at the highest level. The mean of the OS was 4.4±0.7 and the IntR was 4.6±0.7 points out of five. The OS and the IntR were highly correlated with the ICC of 0.719 (p-value<0.001). The satisfactions toward each GPP criteria were ranged between 3.9±0.9 to 4.6±0.7 indicating high levels of satisfaction. All 4 domains of the GPP standards explained the OS and the IntR with R square at 0.541 and 0.363, respectively. However, only PS and PE impacted the OS and only QC and PS impacted the IntR with statistical significance.

Conclusion: Thai customers had high levels of the OS and the IntR toward drugstore facilities and services based on the GPP standards. The PS was the domain that statistically influenced both the OS and the IntR, whereas the PE and the QC also statistically influenced the OS and the IntR, respectively. Since PE was the most weighted domain for current inspection, PS and QC should be more emphasized in future revision of the GPP inspection.

Keywords: Customer; Drugstore; GPP; Good Pharmacy Practice; Satisfaction.