| Objective: To investigate the health food consumption of drugstore clients in Changsha, Hunan province, and to identify the factors that influence clients' attitudes towards health food, and their decisions to purchase or consume health food, and to provide reference basis on guiding the healthy development of health food market, and on legislating and management.Methods:1.1 drugstore randomly chosen from each region of the 5 regions in Changsha during 2008.04-2008.05 and 2008.09-2008.10. The self-designed questionnaire of the Clients Behavior and the Influencing Factors of Drugstore Clients in Changsha on Health Food was used to collect following information: the demographic characteristics of the clients; the details of the health food taken last year; the details about the purchase in drugstore this time; informants' knowledge, attitude, habit and response to health food; ways through for clients to get relevant knowledge about health food; and the service in drugstore.2. The initial data was input in Epidata 3.0 software database. SPSS11.5 was used to analyze the data: to count the purchasing rate of health food in informants; the consuming rate of health food last year; the differences of the health food consuming rate, purchasing rate, and knowledge of health food between people with different demographic characters; and constituent ratio of channels through for clients to get relevant knowledge about health food. Single-factor logistic regression and multi-factor logistic regression were used to analyze factors that influenced clients' decisions to purchase or consume health food.Results:1490 informants accepted the survey and 46.0% (686/ 1490) of those consumed health food last year. People consumed health food mainly for adjusting plasma lipids, supplying nutriments such as vitamins and mineral composition, and enhancing immune function. The most consuming health food was deep sea fish oil soft capsules, propolis soft capsules and liquid calcium soft capsules. The popular forms were capsule, troche and medicinal granules. 28.1% (251/ 917) viewed health food as effective value, 55.5% (486/ 917) regarded it as mild value, while 16.3% (150/ 917) thought it was no use. 2.6% (24/ 917) met side-effect, mainly including nausea, vomit and feeling dizzy.69.2% (1031/1490) of those got "passed" in the test of knowledge on health food. 25.6% (381/ 1490) of those would like to get health knowledge through reading professional books. Only 3.0% (45/ 1490) totally believed the advertisement of health food on media. 77.4% (1154/ 1490) purchased health food in drugstores. 60.1% (896/ 1490) thought the determinant factor in purchasing health food was the effect. 69.2% (1030/1490) once introduced health food to family and relatives. 12.6% (188/1490) didn't believe the function of health food. 10.8% (161/1490) took health food when healthy. The survey also revealed that 46.9% (75/ 160) of clients would choose health food based on their own experience.Multi-factor logistic regression was used to analyze the determinant factors. Education background (OR=1.432) and the frequency of medical education in work place or community last year (OR=1.277) had positive correlation with the informants' knowledge on health food. Factors that influence clients' decisions to consume health food also included gender (OR=1.858), state of health (OR=1.574), age (OR=1.502), the frequency of medical education in work place or community last year (OR=1.203), the passing rate of relevant knowledge (OR=1.155), and the acceptance with advertisements on media (OR=0.603).Conclusion:1. The percentage of people who got "passed" in the test of knowledge on health food was high among drugstore clients in Changsha. Education background and the frequency of medical education in work place or community last year were the factors influencing the informants' knowledge on health food. The most popular education on health food was timely courses in communities.2. The consuming rate of health food in Changsha was approaching to that in developed cities like Beijing. Clients consumed health food mainly for adjusting plasma lipids, supplying nutriments such as vitamins and mineral composition, and enhancing immune function.3. Factors that impact clients' decisions to consume health food include: age, gender, health condition, cognition, the frequency of medical educational activities received last year, acceptance with the advertisement of health food on media.4. The drugstore clients' confidence on the efficacy of the health food and their advertisements from the media was relatively low. At present, due to the media's being still the main ways for the clients to obtain the knowledge about the health food, to our opinion, related management departments should pay more attention to supervising the quality of the products. |
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