Qualitative Exploration of the Factors Influencing the Digitalization of Tunisian Pharmacies

Digital health has received increasing attention over the past decade, a trend accelerated by the Covid-19 health crisis. However, the digitalization of Tunisia’s pharmaceutical sector remains in its embryonic stage and has yet to be thoroughly examined in management science research. This study addresses this gap by exploring the factors influencing digitalization in Tunisian community pharmacies, a critical yet underexplored sector. The research adopts the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework, with the organization as the unit of analysis, which reflects the lack of prior studies on this topic. Data were mainly collected through semi-structured interviews with pharmacists from 15 community pharmacies and analyzed using NVivo 12 and thematic analysis. The results reveal a strong presence of the factors “government actions” and “cost” in the cases examined. Furthermore, this research demonstrates the complexity of technology adoption in community pharmacies and highlights the variability of factors’ influence depending on the technology considered. This study extends the TOE framework to community pharmacies in an emerging economy, highlighting how the relative influence of technological, organizational, and environmental factors varies with different types of digital tools. It pinpoints the factors that policymakers, pharmacists, and digital tools providers can focus on to support digital transformation, offering insights relevant to similar contexts in other emerging economies.