Impact of the Country of Origin on Pharmaceutical Products in the Albanian Market

Abstract: Country image is essential as a country of origin information in mar­ketplaces, especially for pharmaceutical products in developing countries. The origin of the products is used as a surrogate indicator for quality and safety. The pharmaceutical sector in Albania continues to be a developing sector, yet, lo­cally produced products, while growing recently, continue to occupy and sup­ply a small share of the total market. Imports dominate the Albanian drug mar­ket, and the country’s most notable international brands exist. The study aimed to analyze the impact of the country of origin on the decision to purchase me­dicaments from the pharmaceutical sector in Albania and also to highlight the most critical factors affecting the impact of the country of origin on the choice of pharmaceutical products. Two hundred pharmacists, doctors, and chemists participated in the study. The results show that the country of origin is essen­tial in assisting pharmacists in purchasing. The pharmacist’s decision is driven mainly by the higher customer demand to purchase the country of origin at­tribute due to their low information on the product. The latter leads to select­ing the best and most effective medicaments from countries perceived to have high quality.

9th International Scientific ERAZ Conference – ERAZ 2023 – Conference Proceedings: KNOWLEDGE BASED SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, hybrid – online, virtually and in person, Prague, Czech Republic, June 1, 2023

ERAZ Conference Proceedings published by: Association of Economists and Managers of the Balkans – Belgrade, Serbia

ERAZ conference partners: Faculty of Logistics, University of Maribor, Maribor (Slovenia); University of National and World Economy – UNWE, Sofia (Bulgaria); Center for Political Research and Documentation (KEPET), Research Laboratory of the Department of Political Science of University of Crete (Greece); Institute of Public Finance – Zagreb (Croatia); Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Ohrid, University of St. Kliment Ohridski from Bitola (North Macedonia)

ERAZ Conference 2023 Conference Proceedings: ISBN 978-86-80194-72-1, ISSN 2683-5568, DOI: https://doi.org/10.31410/ERAZ.2023

Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission. 

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