"Pet me gadbad, kya karun"

We did this primary research for a Pharmaceutical Client of ours venturing into the OTC Category. The sample universe comprised of 100 respondents across the strata of the society from various area in the cities of Mumbai and Ahmedabad. To further unravel the changing social structure of the Indian consumer, we also included Joint families and Nuclear families into this mix.

Research Objective

Our objective was to understand the awareness / preference of various brands among the respondents while considering the medicine for Indigestion, Gas or Acidity. To gauge the food consumption habits of the respondents and the factors leading to the above ailments. We wanted to get a perspective of the buying behaviour and consumption pattern followed by the respondents.

Hypothesis

Though the symptoms / causes of stomach discomforts like Indigestion, Gas and Acidity are different, most people use the same medicine / remedy to cure its effects. Through this research we wanted to understand whether a separate category can be formed wherein people using Acidity medicine to overcome Indigestion / Gas can be encouraged to use the correct medicine.

Our Findings

Top of the mind recall for medicines related to Indigestion and Gas

We realised that while people do buy over-the-counter medicines for this problem, the reliance on home remedies (classified as others in the chart below) is quite high.
Amongst the OTC Medicines, ENO was found to be the most recalled brand followed by Gelusil. Ayurvedic medicines like Havaban Harde and Pudinhara were also recalled as the curative medicine.

Medicines for Indigestion

Here, the trend of self-prescribed treatment continued with a large percentage (19%) of our audience preferring home remedies like walking, warm water, consuming ajwain and salt, ginger powder, etc. for treating Indigestion. ENO again stood out with the highest percentage (16%) but the skew was a little less in its favour in this category.

There were a few other insights that were gathered related to Indigestion like:

• While most of our respondents were not in the habit of keeping OTC medicines for Indigestion handy with them all the time, they were not averse to keeping ayurvedic and home remedies handy for emergency use.
• A whopping 72% of the respondents relied on self-medication for Indigestion rather than consulting a doctor or even a chemist.

Medicines for Gas

The attitude of our respondents towards medicinal treatment for Gas was quite similar to what we saw earlier for Indigestion. In fact the self-reliance for treating this ailment is even more obvious and prevalent in this case than in the case of Indigestion. A whopping 66 % of our respondents preferred their own ways and means to deal with Gas, remedies like Soda (32%), Home Remedies (10%) like ajwain+salt, and other tactics (24%) like walking and having warm water were preferred over OTC medicines. Predictably, ENO was again the leading brand here with 16% preference as no other brand had any significant preference.

In this case, 41% of the respondents kept their medicine with them only and majority of them preferred to carry a sachet of ENO. Self-medication prevails here as well with 78% respondents choosing to opt for a solution on their own, while another 17% choose to heed the advice given by their family and friends.

Perceived causes of Indigestion

"Ghar ka khaana is the best, I should have stuck to that!" - isn't that the thing we usually say post a heavy meal outside once it starts showing its negative effects or perhaps next day morning after spending a tough time in the loo! Well, our respondents were no different in their opinion. Eating outside and overeating were the two major causes of indigestion according to them. Thereby proving the rhetorical correlation of Indigestion to eating habits.

Chemists and their role in "pet ki gadbad"

Strangely enough, chemists do not play a very significant role other than being a supply point as far as this category is concerned. 72% respondents claimed that they do not ask for any recommendations from the Chemist as far as this ailment is concerned. The Chemists only recommend in case they do not have in stock the medicine which has been asked by the respondents. Chemists are also chosen with “convenience of location” as the most important factor of choice, as 78% of our respondents said that they prefer the nearest Chemist Shop to their home/office.

Online deliveries are a sporadic phenomenon as of now, especially in this category as 51% of the respondents go and buy the medicines themselves, while in the case of 40% respondents someone from the family does this. Since, going to the Chemist Shop always has a specific purpose behind it and the focus is always on objective – the behaviour of respondents while visiting the Chemist is also quite convergent. 77% respondents confessed that they hardly pay any attention to what is stacked on the front shelves of the shop, while a whopping 89% said that they don’t check any promotional material like danglers/posters inside the Chemist Shop. This is largely due to less time spent in the shop along with other factors like space constraint, clutter, etc. The other significant insight that we gained from this exercise is that in this category of medicines as well – price doesn’t matter, the brand does. People are okay to buy very expensive or even quite inexpensive medicines with the primary objective that it should suit them and cure the ailment.

In conclusion

To summarise, while the reasons for indigestion and gas are related to food habits and lifestyle, there seems to be a lot of confusion between acidity, indigestion and gas problems. As a result, a very typical consumer behavior is exhibited while choosing remedies - either the consumer continues to rely on homemade remedies and "naani ke nuskhe" or in some cases chooses to stick with one remedy for any type of "pet ki gadbad".