Consumers' Willingness to Pay for Pharmacist Counselling Services and the Factors Affecting It in Community Pharmacies

Background: Community pharmacists play an important role in improving outcome by providing advice and counselling services to patients.Objectives: The aim of this study was to measure the willingness to pay (WTP) for pharmacist counselling services in community pharmacies and identify determinant factors on consumers' WTP. Methods: A self-administered questionnaire-based survey was conducted in community pharmacies in Tehran (capital of Iran) from January 1, 2020 to February 20, 2021. Contingent valuation method was applied to evaluate respondents' maximum WTP using three hypothetical scenarios illustrating different levels of counselling services. Logistic regression was used to analyze the association between different variables and WTP for pharmacy services.Results: Total number of participants who completed the questionnaire were 332 and 60% of the participants were male. In the first scenario 70.2% of participants were willing to pay for oral counselling pharmacy services. In the second and third scenario, percentage of people willing to pay increased to 79.5%. and 86.1%, respectively. In the first scenario, monthly income (OR = 0.041, P value = 0.04), the duration of underlying illness (OR = 0.04, P value = 0.04) and the using internet (OR = 2.59, P value = 2.59) had a statistically significant relationship with willingness to pay. In the third scenario, the willingness to pay increased as the age decreased. The possibility of using the internet (OR = 3.32, P value = 0.00) and the need for a community pharmacist (OR = 2.19, P value = 0.03) increased the chance of willingness to pay.Conclusions: More consumers are willing to pay for more pharmacist counselling services. Therefore, improving the quality of counselling services could have positive economic effects on community pharmacies.