A clean bill of health for the supermarket pharmacy

Clicks and Dis-Chem may hold the pharmacy monopoly, but Pick n Pay and Shoprite are steadily enlarging their share of the pie. Pick n Pay has been competing in the arena for three years, while Shoprite has produced a pharmacy offspring of 49 across the country.

And current conditions favour such an expansion of diversification. Single exit pricing, which puts a cap on the mark-up of drugs, poses a much smaller threat to the big gun retailers than it does to health and beauty specialists. And ongoing uncertainty about future regulatory legislation makes it that much easier for the likes of Pick n Pay to consolidate its share of the market. Bigger is better applies here and now. Couple the greater ability to be price-flexible with the consumer’s tough economic environment and you have a distinct advantage.

Another, probably inestimable, benefit of the in-store pharmacy is its generation of additional customer traffic. Shoprite, the grocery retailer that has invested the most in its pharmacies, has attributed a 33% increase in foot traffic to these additions. Woolworths might expect the same outcome from Pharmacy+ , the result of its partnership with the Netcare Group.

And, for those who claim they prefer personal specialist attention to ‘mere’ convenience, Pick n Pay has an answer. The retailer’s partnership with the Medical Nutritional Institute and pathology group, Drs. Du Buisson, Bruinette and Kramer, has brought to life an extension of its conventional in-store pharmacy clinic. The new concept primary care clinic, just launched in the Woodmead Hypermarket, boasts a multi-service offering in which conventional services like screening tests are strengthened by value-added options including stress management counseling, weight management guidance and insurance medicals. Staff are appropriately qualified and all major medical aid schemes are connected on-line. The tripartite alliance looks set to combine the convenience of a wide service offering with the assurance of professional delivery.

So what’s the down side? Retailers repeatedly cite a woeful shortage of pharmacists to help them realise their dispensary ambitions. But that’s a different matter altogether.