http://rwe.sciedupress.com Research in World Economy Vol. 9, No. 1; 2018 Published by Sciedu Press 1 ISSN 1923-3981 E-ISSN 1923-399X A Study of Customers’ Behavior in the Use of Pharmaceutical Services – Drugstores in the South of Vietnam Chia-Nan Wang 1 , Dinh-Chien Dang 1 , Nguyen Van Thanh 2 & Pham Ky Quang 3 1 Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Taiwan 2 24h.com Convenience Join-Stock Company, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 3 School of Excellent Education, Vietnam Maritime University, Hai Phong, Vietnam Correspondence: Dinh-Chien Dang, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, 415 JianGong, SanMin District, Kaohsiung 807, Taiwan. Received: January 10, 2018 Accepted: January 24, 2018 Online Published: March 15, 2018 doi:10.5430/rwe.v9n1p1 URL: https://doi.org/10.5430/rwe.v9n1p1 Abstract The current situation in Vietnam is that patients with their illness can easily go to drugstores to buy medicine by their own prescriptions or drugstore ones. This exists for a long time. This research is not focus on the ways to combat this phenomenon, but we aim to study the factors that are affecting behaviors of patients in choosing drugstores in the South of Vietnam. We employed both quantitative and qualitative methodologies for this research; 400 people responded to survey questions and 10 people involved in interviews. Briefly analysis from quantitative study showed that the affected factors are price and process, which is convenient, and people answered to interview agreed that price and product are the important factors for them to go to drugstores. Hence, the sales and policies makers should pay attention to the needs of customers in doing business of drugstores. Keywords: marketing mix factors, service behavior, drugstores 1. Introduction Drugstores are one option of community service selection when people have got illness. In addition to distributing medications to community drugstores also helped public health by providing guidance health care and counseling drug users transferred patients to hospitals to find a doctor who could provide the services accordingly (Hunt & Gunter-Hunt, 1986; Black, 1985). Drugstores are considered as primary health care services by pharmacists provided advice and counseling on health and medicine to those who use our services (Tylee et al., 2007). From the past to the present, the drugstore retail businesses have been constantly evolving through the development of more diverse services to meet the changing consumer behaviors (Segal-Horn & Davison, 1992). Vietnamese drugstores are numerous and spread in different areas around the country. From the trend of increase rate of drugstores in the future, thus making the drugstore retail business success today must focus on the service to meet the needs of customers (Oliveira et al., 2002; Wang et al., 2014a). In each drugstore should be planed marketing strategies that make a competitive advantage. The competitiveness can make a difference in terms of marketing mix factors includes product, price, place, promotion, people, physical appearance and process (Karunakaran, 2008; Bommer et al., 2001; Nguyen & Tran, 2015). This research is focused on studying the factors that affected consumer behavior in the use of pharmacy services in the South of Vietnam. In order to study these factors as a guide to help drugstore entrepreneurs can be planned business strategies with the changing needs of customers and the economy condition in modern times. As a result, the drugstores will be a sustainable business. We tried to conduct the thesis in order to know the factors that affected service behavior of drugstores in the South of Vietnam. Moreover, we would like to know the needs of customers, which benefits to the drugstores entrepreneur in improving the factors including product, price, place, promotion people, physical appearance and processes. We would then propose as the Usage Guidelines for Strategic Planning in the drugstore retail business.