What type of pharmacy are you? What does this mean to your shoppers and where you should focus? ShopAbility discuss, for Retail Pharmacy Magazine.
Who do you think you are (what your pharmacy is) vs how your shoppers see it?
Last article we talked a bit about various retail channels and store types, and why they are visited by shoppers. We’re going to break this down into more detail here specific to pharmacy types.
Subsequent articles will deal in more detail, per type of pharmacy, in the opportunities this presents.
Who are you?
Below is a summary table of pharmacy types that we have developed. It might not cover every individual pharmacy out there, but should cover the majority … if you’re a pharmacy that doesn’t fit into the below, let us know. Always happy to look at new channel segments!
The first row (marked with #1) is the most important indicators, then the second row are the next most important and so on.
| Most Important Indicators | Discounter | One Stop Shop | General Pharmacy | Community Pharmacy | Inner City Pharmacy |
| #1 | Aggressive EDLP pricing across most / all categories | Large range in every category, medium and small size packs (not a focus on bulk) | Busy, high traffic location e.g. shopping mall or major strip | Small footprint store where usually the only service / checkout point is the dispensary | Small footprint store in CBD location |
| #2 | The name ‘price’, ‘value’, ‘discount’ or similar included in the store title or as a major feature of the front of store signage (including window) | Hi-Lo pricing on selected or key categories but not across the board | Medium sized store with dispensary and one other checkout | Dispensary is the focus of the store, limited rest of store range | Customers are businesspeople in transit |
| #3 | Focus on bulk pack sizes, ranging upweights what is on special rather than having a constantly large range across every category | Strong service ethic, staff spending time with customers at shelf | Equal focus / space on dispensary and rest of store | Personal relationship between pharmacist / staff and customers is core, likely to be known by name | Dispensary takes up a good portion of store and is the sole service / checkout point |
| Less important indicators – #4 | Large store with checkouts at front | Large footprint store, at least 1 checkout at front of store | Good general range across most categories but not a huge range of everything, may overindex on perfume and cosmetics versus rest of store | Usually in low to medium ‘community’ locations, not high traffic locations like major strips and shopping malls | Not much time spent with customers – customers are in a hurry |
| #5 | Focus on moving stock / re-stocking rather than spending lots of time with customers at shelf | Destination areas within store, well spaced (clean floor space in between) with clear category headers | While there is service, less likely to spend a long time with each customer (particularly at shelf) as the store is busy, also less likely to know them by name (transient shopping population) | Usually 3 staff or less | Prominent merchandising of emergency personal grooming items such as stockings |
| #6 | Usually not a lot of clean floor space between aisles – these stores fit a lot into a medium sized store |
Fig 1: Pharmacy Channel segments. © ShopAbility 2009
What is evident from the above is that at least who shops in your pharmacies, and how they shop (and thus what you sell) is going to differ depending on the type of pharmacy you are.
If you’re an Inner City pharmacy, for example, you’ll have a lot more corporate types in their 20s, 30s and 40s buying stuff for that night (stockings, condoms, breath freshener etc) in their lunch hour or to/from work. This means you need to staff up at peak transit periods, and range products that apply to their needs (no incontinence pads for this market!) “Service” in these types of pharmacies means ‘get me in and out as fast as possible’. These types of pharmacies are the law of large numbers – you might not see each individual very frequently, but you’ll sure see a lot of different people (traffic).
At the other end of the spectrum, if you’re a Community Pharmacy (generally located on a suburban strip) you’re more likely to have a number of regular older customers, often pensioners, who treat you and your store as a frequent social outing and are more likely to wander in throughout the day, looking for not only the script fill for their chronic ongoing ailments but also (aside from the aforementioned incontinence pads) products associated with aging such as specialist footcare like corns and bunions. “Service” here has to do with the personal nature of the relationship. Customers in these types of pharmacies rely heavily on you for advice.
What does it mean?
We’ve had a go at representing some of the implications of these differences below. We’ll be going into more detail in future articles, but you can use the above and below tables as topline ‘ready reckoners’ of sorts.
You can see that the Range, Service, Value equation we discussed last time is dialed up or down in importance to shoppers depending on the type of pharmacy you are.
| If you are a: |
Shoppers are likely to be … |
Doing more of … |
And less of … |
What’s most important to your shoppers is … | Which means service ranks … | Some opportunities are … |
| Discounter | Bargain hunters | Stock up trips | Distress and emergency tripsPure script fill |
|
Lowest |
|
| One Stop Shop | Mums with strollers, some pensioners | Destination and gifting trips |
|
High |
|
|
| Generalist | Mums with strollers, Empty Nesters | Script drop off before before shopping elsewhere in the areaGifting trips | Distress/emergency trips |
|
Medium |
|
| Community | Pensioners, Older Families | Script fillSocialising!Distress/emergency trips | Destination trips |
|
Highest |
|
| Inner City | Corporate & business typesSingle/Double income no kids (SINKS & DINKS) | Distress and emergency tripsDestination for aesthetic and cosmetic categoriesSome script fill | Gifting |
Range & price less important. Less price sensitive. |
High |
|
Fig 2: Topline Implications of Pharmacy Type. © ShopAbility 2010
So that’s a very general outline on the different pharmacy types. As mentioned, we welcome your feedback on the types and where your pharmacy fits (or doesn’t) as we discuss the opportunities per pharmacy type further in later articles.
Until then!
