The 3Ds of the Perfect Pharmacy
Much like Perfect Store execution is the end goal for many FMCG and CE companies, striving to achieve the Perfect Pharmacy is what’s separating the thriving consumer healthcare brands from the stagnant ones.
Broken down into three categories, the Perfect Pharmacy requires success in three main fields:
- Distribution
- Display
- Detailing (Brand Reco)
It’s commonplace for pharma brands to check Detailing through the use of Mystery Shoppers. This is a well established practice within the industry and it’s long been accepted that Brand Recognition has a significant impact on sales growth.
However, using Mystery Shoppers to further track Distribution and Display does have its issues. Human error, lack of accuracy, and a high cost-time ratio is far from ideal and can lead to a significant decrease in ROI.
Stopping these problems in their tracks, this is why image recognition technology has become such a crucial part of any consumer healthcare stack.
Giving the consumer what they need
Image recognition allows pharmaceuticals brands to easily and accurately track the KPIs that affect consumer choice in-store.
A study by Deloitte Digital found that 76% of buying decisions still happen in front of the shelf. With the pandemic causing baskets to be smaller and trips to be less frequent, there is a shorter window for brands to get ahead.
Add the cost of keeping field reps safe in-store on top of this, and it means that it’s more important than ever for brands to make sure their product is available in all the right ways.
Image recognition allows pharma brands to standardise their most important KPIs and provides the most efficient way for their reps to take action on any issues that may arise.
While there are many KPIs relating to customer choice that could be monitored, only a select few have a big impact on sales. These tend to include:
- OSA & Assortment
- Out of stocks
- Share of Shelf
- Competitor Data
- Price
- Display presence
- Location in store
- Presence of PoS elements
Rather than spending time to analyse these manually, reps can get real-time insights through taking just a few pictures and letting the image recognition technology do the rest.
With 97% accuracy in data collected using this method, it significantly improves ROI and makes life easier for both reps and anyone at head office.
Where data analysis and accuracy in the field has become such an important part of driving growth in today’s economy, consumer healthcare brands can’t afford to not implement the best technology possible for them to achieve the Perfect Pharmacy.
While Mystery Shoppers have Detailing covered and can provide more than 4.2x the ROI through brand recommendation, there is only one option for pharma brands who want to see these same results for Distribution and Display:
For efficiency, accuracy, actionability and growth, image recognition is the way to go.
If you’d like to learn more about how your team can use image recognition to complete more efficient stores audits, read the full outlook in our white paper “SCANNING THE SHELVES – How Image Recognition Helps Consumer Brands To Boost Their Retail Execution” here.
