A Content Analysis of Pharmaceutical Web Sites

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe primary objective of this study was to determine whom the pharmaceutical companies are targeting with their Web sites based on the occurrences of predefined terms on the home pages of the selected pharmaceutical companies. A content analysis was performed on a sample of 38 Internet home pages of pharmaceutical companies. The specific elements evaluated were both consumer information and corporate information that appeared on these home pages. By quantifying the frequency and evaluating the position on the home page of predefined characteristics of the variables, the present study attempted to determine whether consumers or companies were the primary target of pharmaceutical company home pages. From the obtained results, it appears that there are no significant differences between the amount of consumer information versus corporate information displayed on the pharmaceutical Web sites in the convenience sample.