Benefits Of Non Drug Products To The Community Pharmacy

Community pharmacy are in for business. They develop and design marketing strategies and models every now and then to see if there will be improve sales. All marketing strategies and models aim to achieve too main goals; to get new customers and to retain them. One key method that works to achieve both aims is always overlooked by many community pharmacy.
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The main business of every community pharmacy is to sell drugs both prescription only medicines (P.O.M) and over the counter (O.T.C) drugs.  There is no law that forbid community pharmacy from selling non drug products. But it will be unwise to sell non drug related products. To improve sales, you cannot just sell anything. There should some criteria for choosing non drug products which can improve sales.

Criteria For Choosing Non Drug Products

Each location have needs. It is business to solve those needs. Since one business cannot solve all the needs of a location, it is now left for the smart business to solve as much as possible problems in line with the business. Try to find out some add on some patients need in addition to their drugs. Those patients will be delighted to find all in one store where they can get their medical services. For example, a patient treating cold and flu symptoms experiencing running nose and cattarh will most likely be cleaning up with handkerchief which is a very common practice. A simple counsel on the risk of using that handkerchief and providing a better alternative solution such as tissue paper will please the patient. Allowing the patient leave the premise without the tissue paper may lead to non compliance because he or she may forget. The patient may not get well because of failure to adhere to lifestyle changes suggested. They may end up even blaming the drugs for not being active. They end up going to another place. If the next community pharmacy provide the drugs and the counsel together with the tissue paper at a cost, the patient will appreciate the job done. Though the tissue paper is not a drug but it is related to a particular ailment. Having the tissue paper would have help retain that customer.

Non drug products

It is not all the time you point out the benefit of some non drug products you have in the shop before customers can buy them. If your customers trust your brand, they will most likely buy them from you at any rate. It is important to display them in conspicuous places within the floor of the pharmacy. Rotate location to see what work best. You can't tell which person will buy.

Advantages Of Selling Non Drug Products

1. One of the advantage of selling non drug products is that it bring in new buyers and help retain old customers. Some first time customers may be told that a particular community pharmacy sells tissue paper. They may come and buy just tissue paper but may like the place if the service rendered was impressive.
2. Retaining customers is a major goal of every community pharmacy. Some customers only comes to buy add on and periodically, drugs.
3. Some community pharmacy rents a whole shop close to the pharmacy shop just to sell these adds on. Since it is illegal to advertise community pharmacy, they promote the other shop commonly called a supermarket. Since the name of the supermarket may be bearing same name with the community pharmacy and close by, it is an indirect sure way of advertising the company. When the supermarket grows in sales, it will positively influence the pharmacy because the supermarket sales package may also contain the name of the pharmacy.
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4. For some years now, sorting for change to give to customers after buying certain things is a problem. To bypass this, some community pharmacy decides to sell some add on that are of lower cost. They don't sell it to customers who come with big denomination because they are just there to generate change for the main business. Also, when there is no change, some customers prefer to buy non drug products than a drug because they hate drugs. A good example is recharge card business. Some customers sometimes wants to buy credit card to call the person that sent them before making purchase. Allowing them to go out to buy that card can lead to them leaving for another community pharmacy close to where they bought the card. In many cases, they will not buy the card again and go.
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