The Perspective of Stakeholders towards the Problems and Solutions of Health Products Available Through Social Commerce in Thailand

Social commerce has grown rapidly in the past few years and occupies the highest online market share in Thailand. Presently, health products are one of the online problematic product groups. Although various solutions have been used for health product problems on social commerce in Thailand, the problems still continue and intensify. Therefore, this study aims to gather information related to the problems in the perspective of stakeholders and to summarize the problem-solving concepts that are suitable for the context of Thai society. There are 3 groups of key informants including consumers, government officials and entrepreneurs. All 13 key informants were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire. The data was then analyzed by 3 researchers. The findings of the 3 issues were summarized from the interviews. Firstly, stakeholders have a different perspective on health product problems and current problem management issues. Beauty products are the most problematic health product group through social commerce. Expected results from using health products are the most important for consumers. Some of them accept the risks in exchange for the results they desire. Government officials pay attention to false advertising and health effects on consumers that cannot be treated. Entrepreneurs focus on sales and reputation. Each stakeholder recognizes that problem-solving is the responsibility of other stakeholders. Secondly, stakeholders perceive the risks of the problems with different recognition methods, such as consumer experience, word of mouth, various public media and survey data. Thirdly, consumers manage the risks with different approaches. They deal with the risks based on the information they can access without knowing that the information is true or false. They try to protect themselves by learning from their own personal experiences. Moreover, consumers do not succumb to the limitations that make them far from being safe. Therefore, from the context of the problems it can be concluded that the development of consumer potential to protect themselves from unsafe health products consumption is a suitable problem-solving concept for the current situation of Thailand.