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Professional Services Home Outreach – Marketing the Program and Recruiting the Patients
Pharmacy–in–the–Home (PIH) outreach programs are lagging in community pharmacy because there are insufficient clinical service developments within the existing physical environment.It is hard to establish a PIH if you are unable to demonstrate what a prospective patient may find of value, particularly in the form of a clinical service or other service. So in taking a…
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Marketing Professional Services – Tactics & Strategies
Pharmacists are slowly coming to grips with the provision of professional services and are fleshing out suitable business models very cautiously. In part, this caution arises out of a sense of uncertainty because of the culture change that has to be embraced in converting what was previously an unstructured service (provided free of charge) to…
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MARKETING FOCUS – 1. Love your customer more than your products 2. Everybody’s talking brands 3. Promotions Fatigue 4. Unpredictable, Unprecedented 5. The hidden costs of Discounting
1. LOVE YOUR CUSTOMER – MORE THAN YOUR PRODUCTS You’ll have to lift your game (… and lower your prices, too). This clarion-clear message from customers and clients is only now starting to resonate. Responses up to this time have been slow, spasmodic, inconsistent and conspicuously reluctant. Just three years ago the taxi industry was put on…
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Setting up an Open Innovation Program
Let’s face it – community pharmacy is in a knowledge transfer bind. It can no longer function under its own self reliance. It is bogged down because pharmacy leadership has developed hardening of the arteries and finds itself immobile inside each of its traditional infrastructures. The primary cause is twofold: * Information is being collated…
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Marketing Focus – 1. Mixed Messages 2. Fabulous Fads 3. Future Retail Trends – Closing Stores 4. Ageism 5. Amazon – River of Change
1. Mixed messages. That is the essential characteristic of the current marketplace. Depending on the information source, differing perspectives, forecasts and analyses are shared. Little wonder the currency of the term alternative truth. In recent weeks scientists around the world marched in support of truth. Unbelievable. The number of participants was disappointing. Now is the…
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Health Literacy – A Concept for a Valid Direction for Community Pharmacy
Recently, I had a conversation with a health professional involved in the public health system. Research had emerged that large pockets of populations were experiencing epidemic levels of chronic illness such as obesity, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease. These population pockets correlated with areas of low socio-economic households where people had generally poor diets and…
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Guardrails – Why they Need Continual Analysis and exist with a Balanced Direction
Guardrails “A large, freshly-paved parking lot has no boundaries. You can drive in any direction, free to speed to your destination. But once there’s more than a few cars driving, traffic stops. It’s too risky, there are too many uncertainties. A car could come at you from any direction, and so we crawl. Flow is…
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Developing a Single Patient View
From the last business cycle to the current version, pharmacists and community pharmacies have undergone some profound experiences and rapid change. The transition to now is leaving in its wake a sense of indecision and while many opportunities have arisen to improve pharmacist skills and community pharmacy development, only a small number of talented individuals…
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Micro-practice – Future Direction for Pharmacy
I2P has long proposed that pharmacy attracts two types of consumers – customers and patients. A little reflection will resolve this issue because clearly, customers will be attracted to the more commercialised aspects of pharmacy that compete with retailing in general, and the reason why pharmacists see their major competitors as supermarkets and variety stores.…
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Marketing Focus – Essays on Management & Marketing March 2017
THE BRIDGE FROM DISENCHANTED TO ENGAGED Disenfranchised. A key and fundamental issue in commerce, politics, religion and society at large is the disenfranchising of consumers. The consequences are profound and diverse. Lack of loyalty, increased price sensitivity, less tolerance and more assertiveness among existing and prospective clients are relentless in business. In politics the new…