Prevalence and Perceived Effectiveness of Pharmaceutical Digital Marketing among Community Pharmacies in Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Questionnaire-Based Survey

This research analyzes the direct-to-consumer digital marketing technologies in terms of prevalence and effectiveness. A cross-sectional study design was carried out using the non-repeated random sampling technique. Standardized questionnaires were administered by means of face-to-face interviews or online via web software Sphinx (Python Documentation Generator). The relative importance of prevalence (RIP) and the mean evaluation of effectiveness (MEE) were determined for all studied digital media and for all the different groups of respondents (pharmaceutical sales representatives, community pharmacists, consumers, and the entire sample). Inter-individual differences in RIP and MEE were assessed by computing the coefficient of variation, whereas inter-group differences were determined by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with the Scheffé test as a post-hoc test. Research findings showed that, according to the opinion of all respondents, pharmaceutical promotional tools were more prevalent on healthcare websites. However, all respondents considered social media networks and chat messengers to be the most effective in terms of marketing communication. In conclusion, the results of the present research enable a better understanding of which digital platforms are more often used as media for direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical promotion, and which ones are perceived as the most effective for marketing communication.