OVER-THE-COUNTER TRADITIONAL MEDICINE MARKET: THE CONSUMER PROFILE IN DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA

Please can I have academic writing with Harvard or APA referencing. All I need is a literature review which will form part of a dissertation. There must be critical discussion between authors. I don’t want a whole paragraph paraphrased from one author. The study has a focus on African traditional medicine and not chinese or other alternative medicines Some background on the project: In South Africa, traditional medicines are used by millions of consumers and this is a multibillion rand industry. OTC-TM are new in the market and seem to transgress the traditions of the practice of traditional medicine by removing the practitioner from the consumer. OTC-TM medicines are not regulated and are being advertised in an environment where anyone can make claims without bases. The users of TM range from poorly educated to well educated, concerns will be about those who are poorly educated on how they interrogate the claims about attributes of OTC-TM. The literature on TM is either not current or from foreign countries and there is a need for current and local literature. The reason why this study is undertaken is to produce a consumer profile of OTCTM in Durban, South Africa. This consumer profile will be of value to regulators in order to understand people they are protecting. It will be used by companies and individual manufacturing OTC-TM in order to improve their marketing effort. This research has its theoretical bases on the area of Consumer Behaviour and Consumer Buying Process. Consumer behaviour is defined a study of how people and organisations select, buy, use, and dispose of goods, ideas, or experiences to satisfy their needs and wants (Solomon et al. 2006. p6). Wankel (2009) defines consumer behaviour as the attitudes, intentions, decisions, and actions of individuals as everyday consumers in the marketplace (Wankel. 2009. p1). A consumer profile is an effort to capture all this information about a specific target market segment. Consumer’s Buying Decision Process has been explained by a Five Stage Model (Kolter & Keller. 2008. p188). Consumers are to go the following stages when buying: problem recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision and post purchase behaviour (Kolter & Keller. 2008. p188). The primary objective is to describe the profile of over the counter traditional medicine consumers in Durban, South Africa. The secondary objectives in support of the primary objective are • To compile a demographic characteristics of consumers of OTC-TM which include cultural, social and personal factors. • To describe what motivational factors trigger and how they experience the buying process. • To compile the consumer’s knowledge base about the OTC-TM industry.

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