Muslim consumers' purchase intention towards OTC medicine in Malaysia : an empirical investigation from Islamic perspective

Abstract

Medicines are changing globally due to the frequent launching of new and generic medicines which brings about the accessibility of different kinds of medicines for customers in pharmacies. Among the different kinds of medicines, the Over-the-Counter (OTC) medicines market is always under investigation due to its nature of selfmedication. The purpose of self-medication comes from consumer’s decision-making. Thus, OTC medicine usage and purchase behaviour could be an integrative part of global healthcare frameworks and priorities. Hence, the self-medication phenomenon is critical to understand, and it should be subjected to strict regulatory control for the betterment of the Ummah. There is a continuous argument building up among the growing number of Muslim consumers around the world about taking a possibly Halal medication. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to determine Muslim consumers’ purchase intention toward OTC medicine from an Islamic perspective. The study incorporates the extended model of Theory of Planned Behaviour and Maqasid al-Shari’ah approach to effectively measure the key psychological factors like attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, perceived risk, and religious satisfaction in Muslim consumers as the determinants of the OTC medicine purchase decision. A non-probabilistic convenience sampling technique has been applied to choose 308 Muslim customers of pharmacies from the metropolitan territory of Kuala Lumpur and Selangor states in Malaysia. Exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modelling techniques have been used to analyze the data. The results revealed that customers’ attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control toward OTC medicine were of very supportive significance, whereas the perceived risk was not significant. The outcome also revealed that customers’ religious satisfaction significantly moderates the purchasing decision of OTC medicines. Based on the results, specific guidelines are recommended at the end of this thesis for OTC medicine manufacturers, sales outlets, regulators, and Muslim consumers.