Retail Pharmacy Market Structure and Performance

Abstract

Substantial variation has been observed in the use of prescription drugs from retail pharmacies, the level of services provided by retail pharmacies, and the prices paid for prescriptions from retail pharmacies. It is not clear whether local area retail pharmacy market structures affect these pharmacy outcomes. The goal of this paper is to discuss the potential research avenues to address these issues. The discussion provides. 1) background on the retail pharmacy and its place within the pharmaceutical supply chain; 2) a discussion of the data that are available to address these issues and the measures that can be developed from these data; and 3) a review of existing research findings and gaps in knowledge.

Consumer Search, Market Characteristics, and Price Dispersion: New Evidence from the Retail Markets for Prescription Drugs

“…The issue of data variability is further amplified in this particular industry. Individual pharmacies typically do not deal with drug manufacturers directly, but rather through wholesalers, and group purchasing organizations for independent pharmacies or self-warehousing for chain pharmacies (Brooks et al, 2008). 15 In this sense, the aggregated market share of a pharmacy brand/group is more relevant when negotiating with manufacturers.…”

Underlying factors influencing community pharmacies business in low- to medium-developed markets: a societal perspective

“…The items of the second part of the questionnaireextraorganisational factorswere elicited from diverse literature, and the only general categories found in the literature were those suggested for supply chain risks, that is environmental-and network-related risks. [2,[5][6][7]13,18,21,23,28,[36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43] Since the effect of environmental factors, except legislations and policies specialised for community pharmacy practice, is not directly sensed by community pharmacies, authors did not reserve separate items for such variables. More details about variables elicited from the related literature have been provided in Table 1.…”

“…Intra-organisational factors People Issues related to staff Pharmacists' characteristics (such as demographics, personal believes, values and attitude, the level of education and experience, physical and psychological health) [12] demonstrating competence and good relationships with patients, [13,14] the level of technicians' knowledge and skills, [15] standardisation of technicians' training and certification, [16] staff's satisfaction, [17] general job role, compensation, workload, stress, perceived growth, perceived overqualification, pharmacist's communication with other healthcare providers, [18] staff personality, [19] staff attitude [20] Issues related to the manager Manager's personality and competences, [21,22] being pharmacist or nonpharmacist, [23] issues related to the leadership, [24] the level of applying strategic planning, [25] manager's autonomy, [26] the management of stakeholder, [27] providing appropriate job descriptions, appraisal and rewarding system, training and development, having determined objectives, employing enough work forces, the acceptability of management style, the organisational culture, [2] appropriate division of labour, [28] corporate social responsibility, [29] sharing and communicating vision to staff [30] Physical evidence _______________ Physical layout and facilities [20,31,32] Process _______________ Design of procedures [24,31] Promotion _______________ Relationships with physicians, patients and other partners [33,34] Products and services _______________ Service quality, [35] sufficient inventories of prescribed medications, convenience of hours [20] Extra-organisational factors Clients' characteristics _________ The rate of poverty and unemployment among customers, the rate of customers' use of public assistance, [13] clients' expectations and awareness from capabilities of community pharmacies,…”

“…Elements of Porter's 5 forces model, 37 the concentration of chain pharmacy ownership, the number of adjacent pharmacies, [13] competition from governmental sector [21]…”

The operation of a Research and Development (R&D) program and its significance for practice change in community pharmacy

“…Community pharmacy practice is under pressure to change. Over recent years, the revenue generated from dispensing prescriptions has become constrained, profit margins are falling and the sales of non-pharmaceutical products are diminishing [ 1 – 4 ]. There is a clear imperative for community pharmacies to change their business model beyond dispensing and sales of pharmaceuticals [ 3 , 5 , 6 ].…”