The results suggest that participants’ attitudes towards pharmacy ownership were negative. These findings are not in accordance to a study where participants showed positive attitude towards pharmacy ownership [15]. A relatively small number of participants agreed that pharmacy ownership would make them professionally and financially successfully. Similarly, they also considered pharmacy ownership as a financial risk during economic crises. These findings reflect their negative attitudes and their lack of information about pharmacy ownership. These results could be related to another research where same results were reported [16]. Educating pharmacy students about the benefits of pharmacy ownership could aid in changing the attitudes of pharmacy students towards ownership. Additionally, their negative thoughts of ownership mainly from financial perspectives could also be addressed by developing entrepreneurial skills in pharmacy students through both didactic and experiential work in the form of entrepreneurial pharmacy practice program. Not many students agreed that pharmacy ownership would improve their management and marketing skills. Researchers revealed that marketing skills are one of the significant predictors of ownership intention [17]. Therefore, these results could be taken into consideration while enhancing the ownership spirits among pharmacy students.
In response to perceived behavioural control, almost half of the participants agreed that they do not have the knowledge and skills to own a pharmacy. The likely reason of these results could be due to lack of entrepreneurship content in pharmacy curriculum. There is a need to further explore the reasons which leads to these results, and curriculum should be revised accordingly. We also encourage the use of innovative learning approaches, like Problem Based Learning, to develop a range of ownership skills among students at pharmacy schools as supported by Refia and Thompson [18]. Fear of financial losses, lack of security, and work and time demands are some of the factors that discourage people from going into business [19]. The responses of pharmacy students were not very different as majority of them have the same concerns. There is a need to realize that not every pharmacy student can become entrepreneur as there are lot of challenges and insecurities that go with entrepreneurship [19]. It highlights the responsibility of academician and preceptors to play their role in identifying and subsequently nurturing students who have inclination towards entrepreneurship.
Although majority of the participants agreed to the subjective norms questions, overall beliefs of the respondents were negative. A large proportion of pharmacy students disagreed that they would be highly valued in society if they own a pharmacy. These results could be interpreted in two ways. Firstly, we need to look at the public awareness about the role of pharmacist in Pakistan. A study reported that patients’ opinions about the role of pharmacists are not optimized healthcare settings of Pakistan [20]. This amplifies the need to project more positive image of pharmacist and awareness on how they can be beneficial for the society. Secondly, it is pertinent to explore the attitudes of the public towards entrepreneurship and its importance in society as it is the key social and cultural norms. There is a need to promote culture of entrepreneurship in Pakistan, especially among pharmacy students because of many reasons. Firstly, this would help in strengthening community pharmacy setting in Pakistan as researchers have reported the scarcity of qualified pharmacist in majority of pharmacies in Pakistan [21]. Secondly, with the growing number of pharmacy students graduating every year, there is an extreme risk of exacerbation of unemployment [22]. In view of this, there is a pressing need to design effective interventions in the form educational programs for the public to raise their understanding of entrepreneurship, which in turn would encourage the pharmacist to take up this important role to meet the needs of the society.
This study also explored the factors associated with the intention of pharmacy students to become entrepreneur. Several studies reported that women are less likely than men to pursue a male dominated profession such as entrepreneurship [23, 24]. More studies are required to explore how gender affects entrepreneurial behaviour in Pakistani community. It was also observed that senior pharmacy students were more likely to have positive intent towards entrepreneurship. The likely reason of such results could be the increase exposure of senior pharmacy students to community pharmacy training, hospital clerkship and pharmacy management courses. Entrepreneurship curriculum should be developed in a way to expose students to the basics of entrepreneurship in early years of pharmacy education, followed by advanced levels in later years of pharmacy education. The study also highlights the influence of family business on the intentions of pharmacy students to pursue entrepreneurship. The findings of our study were contradictory to traditional entrepreneurship research [25]. We found that students having family businesses were less likely to own a pharmacy than the other group. Presumably, students born and raised in a business environment may have been affected by the drawbacks of entrepreneurship in the form of sacrifices and absence of parents due to business issues. A holistic view of entrepreneurship should be provided to pharmacy students by highlighting the benefits, along with the constraint associated with entrepreneurship.
This study furthers the theory of planned behaviour as the results show that attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control are the significant predictors of intention of pharmacy students to own a pharmacy. The positivity in the beliefs of the students has led them to a favourable intention to own pharmacy. These results are in line with several other studies that reported the same results [12, 26–28]. The findings of these results could become a basis to design effective entrepreneurship program for pharmacy students by adopting the theoretical considerations and the empirical findings of this study.
The strength of this study is that it has highlighted the area where not much work has been done in Pakistan, and around the world. This study was an attempt to fill the gap in the existing knowledge and make important contribution to pharmacy education and entrepreneurship literature. This study has focused on exploring the factors contributing to the intention of pharmacy students towards pharmacy ownership, which will contribute valuably to the existing literature. This study also paves the way for future research in different directions. It would be interesting to know the intentions of pharmacy students in other universities of Pakistan. This study would encourage the pharmacy researchers and academicians to develop, implement and assess entrepreneurship course by exploring the perception of pharmacy students. Future studies could also assess the behaviour of these students after their graduation.
Like any other research, this study is not free from limitations. The results of this single centre study could affect the generalizability of the results. Though this study considers normative influences, it still does not take into account environmental or economic factors that may influence students’ intention to own pharmacy. Moreover, the possibility of potential interactions between variables due to confounding factor, and the possibility of inherent bias may limit the validity of our findings.