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Your business depends on your personal touch
Mamie Adams always enjoyed going to a branch post office in her town because the postal employees there were friendly. She went there to buy stamps just before the holidays one year and the lines were particularly long. Someone pointed out that there was no need to wait in line because there was a stamp machine in…
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“Pushy” customers or are they merely “informed”?
I was rather puzzled when reading an article on the challenges of a “pushy” customer and the pressures placed on student pharmacists. I’m puzzled because we, in pharmacy, have lost the skills of listening. We have become so “medicalised” that we now seem to “tell” rather than “partner in a satisfactory outcome”. Whether the educators…
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Good enough never is
There’s a good reason why Debbie Fields of cookie fame is so successful, and she summed it up in an aphorism I’ll never forget – “Good enough never is.” Debbie told me how she coined that phrase after she visited one of her first stores. She walked in unannounced and saw a large crowd of…
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Scottish pharmacy – a public/private partnership that encourages pharmacist clinical development.
Scotland has long displayed a talent for identifying the care role for pharmacists and expanding that role by supporting clinical aspirations for pharmacists, and made central to their total National Health Service delivery. The HealthierScotlandStrategy document published in August 2017 and titled ‘Achieving Excellence in Pharmaceutical Care’ aims to “strengthen the role of pharmacy in both hospital and…
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The Race to the Bottom
The McDonald’s Big Mac is an icon of take-away eating – let’s face it………..can you remember when you first enjoyed one so many years ago? It’s a guilty pleasure to say the least, but as far as hamburgers go, it is far from the best. In reality, if we were to taste an assortment of…
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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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Pharmacists are primary in healthcare and its economics
One of the most successful marketing slogans ever developed by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia (PGA) was: “Ask your family chemist – he knows!” The public response to it was massive and just seemed to hit the right nerve. Its popularity eventually irritated the medical profession who couldn’t understand how a pharmacist might know more…
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Clinical Services – What Patients Will Pay For
Pharmacists have always been well regarded by their patients for their ability to deliver health literacy programs, over the counter in semi-private spaces in roughly three to five minute segments. Generally, this service has been delivered free of charge and it has formed a nearly invisible component of “core” business. Only invisible because it was free,…
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OMNS News Service – Vitamin C and Sepsis
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, May 24, 2017 Vitamin C and Sepsis: The genie is now out of the bottle The enormous effectiveness of vitamin C in helping to resolve any of a wide variety of infections comes as no surprise to anyone who has made at least a minimal effort to study the large body of…
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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…