Omni-Channel Retail Marketing

Introduction

The introduction of Omni channel retail marketing was based on the need to have a smart growth strategy. Life pharmacy is an example of such retailers that aims to grow. Growth is mainly experienced through revenue growth, customer satisfaction, client retention rate, amount of sales and profits (Bèzes, 2019). Life Pharmacy is a leading New Zealand pharmacy retailer and is one of the Green Cross subsidiaries. It belongs to the health and personal care stores industry and sells a wide range of products comprised of health, beauty and pharmacy products (Life Pharmacy, n.d.). It has a great online presence, and its stores are in New Zealand, with it having twenty-one brick-and-mortar shops in Auckland. The store is New Zealand-operated, but it sells its brand to overseas customers (Life Pharmacy, n.d.). To better understand the nature of its customers and their preferences, the buyer persona is Iris. She is a twenty-one-year-old lady who lives in Auckland. Further explanation of the persona is in Appendix 1. Typically, there are steps that consumers go through while engaging with an organization. They are known as the customer journey. The customer journey map for Iris has been highlighted in Appendix 2. This report discusses the biggest opportunities and threats that Life Pharmacy may encounter over the next five years and recommendations for the retailer to offset the threats and take advantage of the opportunities. An overall strategy for the recommendations will also be offered as well as the estimated cost for implementing the recommendations and the company to implement them.

Opportunities and Threats for Life Pharmacy in the next five-plus years

Understanding the opportunities and threats a business is exposed to is important for critical success (Benzaghta et al., 2021). Basically, the companies identify the areas they are performing well, maximizes them, and improves the areas that expose them to threats to help them maintain their competitive advantage. The threats and opportunities have been presented in Appendix 3.

Threats

High Competition

According to Benzaghta et al. (2021), competition is when companies offering the same commodities contest in the market. Competition in the health and personal care stores industry has greatly increased in New Zealand. The growth has been experienced over the past five years due to the rise of health consciousness. Iris is a good example of a health-conscious person who focuses on her health needs. According to Nicomedes & Avila (2020), the rise of COVID 19 has also increased health consciousness among individuals. In conjunction with World Health Organization, various governments developed strategies for reducing and preventing the spread of the virus. Some of the recommendations were sanitization, hand washing and consuming healthy products that would boost the immunity. This has made many businesses to be brought up to serve the health needs of individuals and are expected to rise in the next five years. This puts downward pressure on prices and may make life Pharmacy lose its customer share.

Counterfeit drugs

Haq & Esuka (2018) defines counterfeit drugs as drugs with no active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), a wrong quantity of API, poor quality of API or expired commodities. The rise of counterfeit drugs makes most customers sensitive to brands. For example, Iris is very sensitive to the pharmacy products she uses. Some companies in the health and personal care stores industry offer low-quality counterfeit products that leave the customers unsatisfied (Haq & Esuka, 2018). For example, in the recent era where people are being vaccinated against COVID 19, most customers may be sensitive to the vaccines they are being given to prevent them from having some side effects (Nicomedes & Avila, 2020). Most individuals believe that the pharmacies are mostly operated by people with no health background and professionalism. Therefore, they are afraid of being served with counterfeit drugs that do not meet the market standards and customer specifications.

Opportunities

Rising demand for health care services

According to Nicomedes & Avila (2020), healthcare demand is progressively rising, and people buy health-conscious products. Research reveals that most nations will use a GDP exceeding 20% by 2050 for health care (Journal of Health and Medical Economics, 2022). The changing lifestyles and prevalence of preventable diseases are major contributing factors to health care growth. For example, obesity is a condition that requires individuals to embrace a healthy lifestyle. The rise of Obesity in New Zealand cannot be ignored. Most obese people buy supplements in pharmacies to reduce their weight. Being health conscious has also played a part in increasing the demand for health care services which is also expected to rise in the next five years. This increases the number of customers in the health and personal care stores industry, thus benefiting Life Pharmacy.

Advancement of technology

According to Nicomedes & Avila (2020), the world has experienced enormous technological change, especially in the twenty-first century. Technology has tangible and intangible benefits to corporations and makes operations easy. Some of the benefits are efficiency in communication, easy promotion of goods and services using digital media platforms, automating operations, and information protection. Basically, in Omni channel retailing, the customers go through the company’s brand on the online sites first before visiting the brick and mortar stores. This is one important section of the customer journey where customers start by identifying the products (Mosquera et al., 2018). A good presence in the market using social media platforms would help a company attract many customers from New Zealand and beyond. For example, Iris is an avid social media lover and can easily see the brand. Therefore, the advancement of technology is a great opportunity for Life pharmacy to promote its products in the market.

Recommendations for Life Pharmacy

Maximize the use of digital media

Life pharmacy should increase the use of digital media in its operations. The rise of technology has increased the usage of digital media. Mosquera et al. (2018) define digital media as any communication media. The main forms of digital media are social media platforms, mobile media applications and emails. The social media platforms can be an effective tool for Life Pharmacy to help it deal with the challenge of high competition and take advantage of the opportunity presented to it of advancement in technology. In recent times, people have adopted the use of technology, and it is rare to find individuals going to physical stores and spending hours looking for the commodities that meet their requirements. Normally, they use their phones to research the best corporations that can offer the best products that will meet or exceed their expectations (Huang, 2021). For example, before Iris settles on Life Pharmacy’s products, she has to explore numerous options from other companies in the industry before settling on a certain brand. Mainly, customers do the research by looking at customers’ reviews and checking the company’s websites on the nature of the products they sell. Therefore, it is evident that Life Pharmacy should acknowledge the power of social media and integrate it to make the Omni channel customer experience memorable and good.
The use and implementation of digital media in Life Pharmacy is an easy technique that can be fully executed within a month and be integrated into the business operations. They need to employ a marketing agent who would operate their social media platforms and respond to the customers’ requests on the sites. The person should have an information technology background which is a great requirement in operating the digital platforms. The rise of social media usage in New Zealand and abroad is on the rise (El Baghati, 2022). Thus, Life Pharmacy should increase its online presence to attract a wide range of audiences, thus gaining a competitive advantage in the presence of competitors. For example, 3.04 billion individuals use social media globally, and 90 % use the platforms to reach out to brands or retailers, as indicated in the figure below (El Baghati, 2022). Therefore, digital media is a technique that should be maximized in the company. Typically, employing a marketing agent will cost the company $ 400 per month.

Figure 1: Image showing the increased usage of social media around the globe.

Offering high-quality products and services

The types of products and services a company offers can help it gather or scatter the customers. However, no customer can ignore or reject high-quality products and services that satisfy their needs and meet or exceed the market requirements (Le & Nguyen-Le, 2020). Offering high-quality products and services would help Life Pharmacy deal with the threat of counterfeit drugs and take advantage of the rising demand for health care services. High-quality products have features such as conformance to the market standards, reliability, have good features and performance (Bèzes, 2019). Having high-quality products in Life pharmacy means that there will be no room for counterfeit products. Counterfeit products leave customers unsatisfied and make them look for other brands that offer quality products. For example, if Iris purchases counterfeit products in Life Pharmacy, that would be her end to be a customer in the retailer and may also write a bad customer review. On the other hand, if she purchases a high-quality product, she would be a regular purchaser top the point of developing loyalty and referring her friends, family and colleagues.
Good customer services in Life Pharmacy can also attract a wide range of customers, especially noting a rising demand for health care services. Customers who receive good customer service are always delighted with the company and build trust and loyalty with it (Le & Nguyen-Le, 2020). Life pharmacy can employ some aspects of good customer service such as professionalism when serving the customers, patience, a people-first attitude, respect for the customers, a positive attitude, empathy, and the ability to communicate clearly with the customers. Therefore, delivering high-quality products and services is a technique that every Omni channel retailer should seek to integrate into their companies (Huang, 2021). High-quality products require the company to have a powerful supply chain system that tracks the flow of the commodities to ensure that all the supply chain networks conform to the quality standards. This can be done by training the supply chain management team. Delivering quality products and services also requires the company to offer training and development to the existing staff for them to offer the required customer services. Therefore, Life Pharmacy will require funds to look for a qualified trainer. The cost of training and development per employee is $1,111, and the training would be done in two days.

The overall strategy to be used

Impact map

Educated Guess of the implementation costs

Recommended company

The institute of management is an ideal company for offering training and development for life pharmacy staff. The company is based in New Zealand and offers learning and development solutions that are customized and contextualized for the company’s needs (IMNZ, 2022).

Conclusion

Understanding effective strategies to apply in an Omni channel retailer is important for the success of businesses. It helps businesses position themselves in the market effectively and survive the dynamic world in the present and future. Life pharmacy is an Omni channel retailer based in New Zealand that belongs to the health and personal care stores. It sells a wide range of products which are comprised of health, beauty and pharmacy product. The main threats the company is exposed to in the next five-plus years are high competition and counterfeit drugs. The main opportunities are the high demand for health care products and advancements in technology. The recommendations for the retailer to survive the market in the five-plus years are maximizing the use of digital media and offering high-quality products and services. The estimated costs of executing the recommendations are $ 12,000 and the recommended company is, The institute of management New Zealand.

References

Benzaghta, M. A., Elwalda, A., Mousa, M. M., Erkan, I., & Rahman, M. (2021). SWOT analysis applications: An integrative literature review. Journal of Global Business Insights, 6(1), 55-73.
Bèzes, C. (2019). What kind of in-store smart retailing for an omnichannel real-life experience?. Recherche et Applications en Marketing (English Edition), 34(1), 91-112.
El Baghati, M. (2022). Three Tips That You Need to Fit Social Media into Your Omnichannel Strategy. Social-hire.com. https://social-hire.com/blog/small-business/how-social-media-fits-into-your-omnichannel-strategy
Haq, I., & Esuka, O. M. (2018). Blockchain technology in pharmaceutical industry to prevent counterfeit drugs. International Journal of Computer Applications, 180(25), 8-12.
Huang, W. J. (2021). Literature Review on Omnichannel Retailing. Expert Journal of Marketing, 9(1).
IMNZ, I. (2022). Imnz.co.nz. https://imnz.co.nz/company-solutions/.
Journal of Health and edical Economics, J. (2022). Consumers and Their Demand for Healthcare. https://health-medical-economics.imedpub.com/consumers-and-their-demand-for-healthcare.php?aid=21061#:~:text=Healthcare%20demand%20is%20gradually%20rising,suboptimal%20use%20of%20healthcare%20resources.
Le, A. N. H., & Nguyen-Le, X. D. (2020). A moderated mediating mechanism of omnichannel customer experiences. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management.
Life Pharmacy. (n.d.). PHARMACY FINDER. https://www.lifepharmacy.co.nz/pharmacy-finder/
Mosquera, A., Olarte-Pascual, C., Ayensa, E. J., & Murillo, Y. S. (2018). The role of technology in an omnichannel physical store: assessing the moderating effect of gender. Spanish Journal of Marketing-ESIC.
Nicomedes, C. J. C., & Avila, R. M. A. (2020). An analysis on the panic during COVID-19 pandemic through an online form. Journal of affective disorders, 276, 14-22

Appendices

Appendix 1: Buyer persona

Appendix 2: Customer Journey Map

Appendix 3: SWOT Figure of Life Pharmacy