A Review on Community Pharmacy Engagement and Customer Devotion: A Venue for Improving Customer Loyalty in Your Business

Gargantiel Maryglen F., Faller Erwin M.

community-based pharmacy; customer loyalty; customer perception, pharmacy engagement

The Community-based pharmacy practice has evolved and nowadays has been a mixed plethora of enhanced pharmacy services and engagement for the stakeholders and business opportunities for most standalone establishments all over the country. Gone are the days where the focus is on product groundwork and dispensing, to becoming client-centered and healthcare adept frontliners within the four walls of a community pharmacy. The pharmacists involved in this shift are practitioners in their own respective communities who have seen the need to adapt to the transitioning process. They are primarily involved in leading and advancing team-based patient care services in communities to improve patient health and safety. An efficient marketing strategy among community pharmacies, amidst competition, needs to be developed based on contemporary information about the consumer’s behavior in order to attract clients and develop customer loyalty. To keep the customers, various businesses adapted the concept of engagement and devotion as applied in various service businesses to improve the sales and their marketing strategy. However, this particular practice has not been given emphasis in the context of pharmacy businesses as there are limited studies conducted on this concept.

The conventional ‘commodity type’ drug stores are now slowly evolving as community pharmacies are offering added health services (such as but not limited to:  clinical services, vaccination, online selling) together with counselling activities, and are faced with a new challenge of marketing these services to their customers. Developing the scenario wherein pharmacy engagement towards the customer via the pharmacists’ delivery of healthcare services has changed the atmosphere in the community leading to enhanced customer devotion and improved loyalty to the pharmacy business.

https://doi.org/10.31871/WJRR.14.1.7