Keys to optimize the position of the laboratory in the pharmacy

According to the Asociación para el Autocuidado de la Salud (ANEFP) and IMS the pharmacy Spanish market is showing an increasing tendency since the third trimester of 2013. The private market of prescription and the self-care or consumerhealth are increasing and now are accounting for a 40% of the total volume and a 26’8% in value. The consumerhealth market ranks as the second segment that brings more sales to the pharmacy, after the prescription market, acting as a mean of survival and great support to the pharmacy.

Given this situation, it is highly attractive for the laboratory to have a closer relationship with the pharmaceutical target in order to get a better position of their products in the pharmacy office, to include advertising at the point of sale and, among others, to take their brands up to the top of mind of the pharmacists at the moment that they are recommending to the consumer/patient

From several studies done through the lasts months by the market research consultancy Hamilton, it has been detected that the pharmaceutical target would highly appreciate other resources that favored their daily activity beyond trade policies applied by the laboratories

In order to determine what can provide the laboratories, great beyond of the price variable, it is essential to use research market techniques that allow us to go deeper in their daily life, detecting insights and needs that help the pharmacist to optimize the management at the pharmacy office. 

¿How can the laboratories get closer to the daily activity of the pharmacist?

It is necessary to reinvent the traditional research market techniques to delve in the daily work of the pharmacist and the pharmacist auxiliaries, detecting what incitements are the key in the purchasing decision at the point of sale

For this we apply mix deepening techniques in which are implemented ethnographic methodologies and in depth techniques in order to observe in situ the pharmacy strategies, understanding the mission, the functions, the attitudes, the motivations and the needs of the pharmacists in their main activities. The aim is to identify what the laboratory can provide in their day-to-day situations in order to be closer with them, and indirectly, stay in a better position in the list of recommendations and sales.

Sometimes creative dynamics are also proposed in order to overcome the rational barriers, deepen to a more latent and unconscious level and landing the ideas/insights of the pharmacist in concepts of new products and/or services that define a model “win-win” between the laboratory and the pharmacy.

Helping the pharmacists in the management of the pharmacy implies, also, advising them in the mix marketing, giving them tricks about the products, services, distribution, communication and promotion, among other tools. For the laboratory it means defining a better strategy of category management in the pharmacy, optimizing the investment in publicity and communication and, also, going into detail on the rational and emotional elements that influence the pharmacist recommendation

For that is necessary to analyze the possible routes of the consumer in the pharmacy, determining the cold and the heat zone in the same and in the lineal and, moreover, measuring what elements and what stimulus are susceptible at the point of sale to attract the attention and become a trigger for a purchase. Establish a quantification of these elements will allow us to know the consumer decision tree and detect what button should we touch in order to optimize our marketing strategies and the trade marketing.

Let’s get a moment the pharmacist role… who of us would not like to be helped in their daily activities? Who would not like that others care about our business? Who would not like to sale more? 

The pharmacist are more receptive to listen new proposes, to apply marketing strategies and to improve their point of sale.

Being the first and the best in giving this advisements will let getting us a better position of our brands and products in their pharmacist and, also, in their top of mind.  

Jennifer Varón

Is it worthwhile to be wrong?

This question has the same answer than “is it profitable to win the lottery?” At the beginning both are affirmative but it depends on which is your reaction in front of an event or another, depending on how you invest and how you apply what you obtained, whether the lottery or whether the learning gained by the mistake done.

According to the politician and philosopher Marco Tulio Cicerón “is about humans being wrong but is by foolish people persisting on the error”. In my opinion, what truly results worthwhile is not doing a mistake but recognizing it.

Canadian researchers have found some evidence that as older we are, more we learn from our mistakes than from our success, and, also, that the learning from the trial-mistake is more effective for the memory than the knowledge achieved without mistakes. 

Leave open the possibility to be wrong and having the ability of identifying and recognizing the error provides the companies a high opportunity for the development of the professionals, as well as for the evolution, growth and recognition (reputation) of the brand. The recognition of the error allows the brand to be recognized as human, to be recognized as an empathic brand for its clients, employees and society.

The consumers don’t expect their brands to be infallible neither to be always perfect; they just want them to be honest about their mistakes. The human nature makes us run away from those people that (apparently) don’t have weaknesses and that never get wrong. Those attitudes generate problems connecting, trusting and engaging with the company.

Therefore, that an organization has the possibility to be wrong (I am not even saying promotes) and has acquired and developed the capacity and the ability to recognized their mistakes (I am not even saying that has created the channels) will allow it to develop other qualities for what being recognize. Among those qualities I would highlight:

•  Innovation: It is not possible to evolve and growth without assuming that there is a possibility to be wrong, without recognizing that the correct path is not always the straight line. That is an ability that leads to the bravery of assuming risks that all companies have and that all innovation process, forced or not, entails. The worst decision is the one never taken or the one taken late.

• Flexibility: For creating the process that protect the possibility of making a mistake and understanding that only from freedom emerges the trust and the creativity to evolve.

• Objectivity: To be able to read in key of future and in a positive way the situation that leaded us to the mistake, as well as we should avoid blaming the others about our mistakes

• Transparency: It is one of the ways of incorporating the honesty to the features of humanity and empathy expected from a company or brand. This transparency should show the mistake through the communication and the rectification. In an hyper connected world transparency is not an option, is an obligation. Otherwise we already know that it is a mistake of incalculable consequences.

• Coherence: closely related to the last point; the coherence is the shorter distance between what I am as a brand and a company and what I am saying that I am. For a coherent brand/company it would be easier (and cheaper) to face their possible mistakes.

• Humility: It doesn’t mean to recognize a weakness but to possess the wisdom and strength to know how to rectify.

• And above all, the learning capacity: As Oscar Wilde said: “experience is the name we give to our mistakes”. The experience is what I am able to do with what I learned. The main point is that if as a company, brand (or even a person) I will not have the humility to recognize my mistake, I will not learn from the past and even less give a good answer to the future.

But the most important, beyond developing these skills, the image that you will project will allow you to acquire a competitive advantage that will be difficult to beat for your competence, the capacity to engage and retain a talent with those same skills, this same attitude. Creative people and professional, with capacity of innovation, brave, honest, transparent, and coherent with their behaviour and their way of thinking and doing, flexible in front of the adversity and, specially, with the humility needed to learn about their mistakes.

Values from a talent that in many cases the companies, and the society where we live, seem to waste when “retiring” by force professionals that, at 50 years old, with a bag full of experience, errors and good choices, mistakes and learnings, and probably in the best moment of their professional life, we deny, and with we deny ourselves, the opportunity to do shorter (and therefore, more worthwhile) the path they already did, forcing us to go across this path again and probably make a mistake once more.

It is not worthwhile committing, year after year, generation after generation, the mistake that we will be eternally young and lacked of the humility to recognize the value of the experience of those who already did the path before us and to not develop the capacity of learning from them. Human is the only animal that stumbles twice on the same stone and, with him, all the entire society.

If we have identified the mistake, we should learn from it and, as Cicerón said, don’t be so foolish to continue persisting on it

Sebastián Fernández de Lara

Marcas que se reinventan

Jordi Aymerich, profesor de Marketing de la Universidad de Barcelona, ha participado en “El Matí de Catalunya Ràdio”, para hablar de marcas clásicas que se reinventan con el paso del tiempo. También han participado el Director de Marqueting de Munich, Xavier Berneda y el Director General de Bultaco, Curro Bultó.

XI Congreso de Retail 2014 en Lima

Sebastián Fernández de Lara, socio director en hamilton, ha llevado a cabo varias ponencias en el XI Congreso de Retail 2014 en Lima sobre los consumidores, su evolución y lo que buscan en las marcas. Según Sebastián cada vez las marcas se encuentran con un consumidor más exigente e infiel. ¿Cómo se da este cambio? ¿Qué estrategias pueden seguir las empresas frente a ello? Sebastián da respuesta a estas preguntas entre muchas otras

Free Gluten... ¿New Trend?

Gluten. What is gluten? How is it affecting society? What is it causing? Do celiac and non celiac act in the same way in front of free gluten products? Is this a necessity or a trend or a revolution? 

The gluten, a glycoprotein found in some cereals such as wheat, rye, barley and oats, is present in our daily diet and in the trolley of the person responsible for the household purchases, therefore, the store shelves are becoming a huge repertoire of free gluten products acting as commercial claim for many brands.

Without realizing it gluten free products have entered inside the basket of the preservatives, additives, proteins, etc. and more ingredients that help to preserve the food and that, we all want to avoid in our daily diet.  Gluten has become one of the biggest trends of recent times.

In addition to that, the food industry is seeing a gold mine on that protein. Unintentionally, gluten has become the protein that the modern society wants to erase of their diet even without having been diagnosed as intolerant or gluten allergic by a specialist doctor. This has turn to a mass phenomenon born from the need of the people gluten intolerant or allergic. A need that claims to the food manufacturers to:

• Have a clear labeling on products, helping them to avoid risk in their diet. 

• Have a wide variety of products without gluten.

Intolerants also claim for an affordable price. In this issue the distributor brands are gaining much ground. According to data by Hamilton Intelligence the main purchasers of gluten free products (pastries, pasta, bread, biscuits, flour or cereals) usually buy brands of the food distributor (private-label).

Died and trend or intolerance? Where is the origin?

It is difficult that the trend to eat products “without” don’t influence us. More and more people join to the “without” product consumption (without gluten, without lactose, without preservative, without salt, etc). The last published data regarding to gluten is that the 30% of the adults in the USA-almost 1 out of 3- has stopped or are trying to stop consuming products with gluten.   

Elisabet Suárez

Consumers from the cadle

Perharps for the fact of becoming a mother and for every thing that this involves, you feel suddenly inverse in a world, until this moment, unknown for you and it is then when you see how they grow up and how they learn and evolve and, moreover, when you realised how fast time passes and the constantly changing needs that they experienced. All of this, united with my investigation task, leads me to dive into this fascinating world of market reasearch of children.

Through the market research we try to bring closer the frims with the clients, known them better in order to offer them services/products more adapted to their likes, preferences and needs. And for that, it is also important known the children market, even thought studying this target it is always a challenge.

A challenge that adquires importance day to day because this young consumers increasingly become part of the decissions of the buying process at home. What mother has not bought a product in the supermarket at the insistence of his son at the shop shelve? Or at the insistence of the child when seeing the advert on the TV? Or what mother has not succumbed under the sentence “my friend has it”? Because we don’t have to forget that the main prescribes are the kids, the classemates or the games that encourage to “have what someone else has”.

For that it is important to understand this segment, understand the behaviour of the kids. How do they think? How do they act? What do they need? How do they connect with the brands? How do they absorb all the inputs they get? What influences in their decisions? How do they interact with their friends?...

But if we analyzed in detail this target, not only we need to understand well their behaviour, their concerns and their motivations, we also need to take in account the complexity of this segment due to their fast evolution, what they like today they don’t tomorrow and that is because they are constantly searching for 
the novelty. An other aspect to consider is that it is a target that develops themself so quickly for the reason that in the short term they have fundamental changes, concluding that nothing has in common a kid 5 years all with one of 9 or this with one of 12.

Therefore we must made products/services to mesure for them. for each moment of their childhood and is for this that when we face an investigation with children we need to take in account different facets:

• Headed Target: Important to define what ages we would like to collect because we must do small age cuts (3-5 / 6-8 / 9-11 / 12-14) or we can also have the need to study unique ages (P4 kids, kids from the 1st year of the primary school, ...) because their tastes and opinions are really different and what can perfectly fit with a 5 years old child can not fit with on of 8 years. Another important topic when working with kids is getting the fathers or tutors permissions for child under 14 years old.

• The interviewers: It is important to select well the interviewers because they need touse a language adapted to the children. Moreover, they need to be albe to stabilshed a good relation with the kids in order to extract food information from them.

• The questions and the wayof asking them: It is important adpat the questions to the target language and at their comprehensive level, this implies using comprehensible scales for them and easy to answer, supported in many occasions with draws or incons very easy for them to identify.

• The techniques to use: These are manyany and varied and it will highly depend on the product/service that we are valuing or on the information we need to apply one or another. At the generic level we can speack about quantitative studies (hall-test, home-test, pre-test and post-test, studies about habits, use or actituds, conjoint analysis, etc.) or also qualitative studies (kid observation in situ, focus group, projective techniques, etc.).

Finally, it is important to remark that the brands must take in account that we are facing a permeable and influenced target and more than beyond the law, the brand should approach them in a responsible way.

If we keep in mind all these aspects we will realized a good investigation that will help us approaching this small consumers that are usually the most demanding.






Mónica Rabasó