title: Analysis of consumer demand for herbal medicine in the Republic of Armenia.
abstract: Herbal medicines nowadays tend to gain more and more popularity among health care providers and drugstore customers, as well. Current study has been an effort to explore the attitudes and customer behavior of drug consumers in Yerevan, Armenia. It is a cross-sectional descriptive study in nature an has no hypothesis set and does not claim to have produced statistically significant generalizable results. However, it is a valuable start point for further investigations with presumably quantitative statistical analysis methods. Some four districts of Yerevan out of twelve were randomly selected with subsequent random selection of proportionately adequate number of drugstores, where the interviewers approached every 4th customer with the request to answer the questionnaire that they had previously developed and tested in three randomly chosen non-target drugstores from one randomly chosen non-target district. Data were collected by filling paper forms followed by entry and processing using SPSS 11.0 for Windows. The results of the study demonstrate that some link exist between customers' appreciation of herbal drugs as safe and effective and their level of education. Another dimension discovered, was that university students appeared to be the most satisfied with the affordability of herbal medicines.
authors.affiliation: Yerevan State Medical University, Department of Pharmaceutical Management, Armenia.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Beglaryan
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Amirjanyan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001136:Armenia; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D029001:Herbal Medicine / Q000191:economics* / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D008517:Phytotherapy; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires