Pharmaceutical Digital Marketing of Non-prescription Drugs: A Systematic Scoping Review

Abstract

There are two main purposes for this review, namely: (1) To determine key themes related to pharmaceutical digital marketing that have an impact on non-prescription drug consumers. (2) To identify if there is a knowledge gap in the non-prescription drug digital marketing literature. Four electronic databases were chosen as follows: ScienceDirect (Elsevier), Scopus, EBSCOhost, and Google Scholar, to comprehensively cover this broad research scope. A total of 498 studies were found in all databases. After they were thematically sorted, the qualitative synthesis covered 14 studies that were classified under the marketing theme. The results revealed noticeable knowledge gaps in the current literature, where four of the fourteen studies belong to the same author. Additionally, the review indicates the need to conduct further research addressing the pharmaceutical digital marketing topic and its various ramifications.