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In today's
changing word eco-technologies are creating new jobs,
globalisation is leading to increasing alienation and social
discontent and the new media are changing the behaviour of
consumers who are becoming more
individualistic and are searching for more certainty.
Consumers have
changed a lot in recent years. During the 90's the consumer
was won over by price, sales and special offers. Today,
price is still very important but there has been a number of
changes in consumer behaviour. Firstly, consumers are no
longer willing to buy products that are cheap but do not
exactly correspond to their needs. Rather, advice on what
product to choose has become as important as price. The
growing importance of assisting customers in choosing of
products has led to a growing demand for specialised points
of sale. This trend can be linked the rise of a kind of
consumer narcissism, as the consumer wants to set themselves
apart from the crowd and affirm their own individuality.
Consumers
want to be recognised, given respect and want to buy
something personalised, unique. They tend to abandon large
and impersonal shops in search of a one-to-one relationship.
In short, customers want to be given personalised service
and have become hedonists. As a result, large chains and
supermarkets have tried to scale down and limit choice. This
can be seen in the fragrance, shoe and clothing sectors,
where the consumer is becoming ever more demanding,
hedonistic and narcissistic, seeking products that are
literally made in their own image.
What has happen in the last
50 years for this sea change to come about? Between the
Second World War and the 1970's a consumer society has been
created by a strong economical growth. Despite the first oil
crisis in 1974, consumer spending and acquisitions have
continued to rise. Unemployment boomed after 1983 and people
started to worry about job security, leading to a growth in
saving and fear for the future. The first Gulf War broke out
in 1991 and consumer society changed profoundly as a result.
Due to renewed economic growth, consumer spending starting
to grow after 1998 but the euphoria did not last long as the
spectre of economic recession reappeared in 2008 and
unemployment restarted to rise.
SOCIAL
CHANGES DETERMINE NEW CONSUMER CULTURE
Consumers
feel that they are being cheated by the large
multinationals, artificial rises in prices, useless
gimmicks, the hard sell and false advertising. Due to this
crisis in consumer confidence, consumers have become more
critical and are demanding cast-iron guarantees. According to a
survey conducted in France in 1999, 64% of consumers do not
trust supermarkets. They continue to shop there, but are
very critical of supermarkets and their business model. In
the meantime a consumer culture has grown up which has been
determined by a series of social changes:
- A lengthening of life
expectancy.
- Health and well-being has
become a central concern of society as a whole. The pursuit
of good health has become a essential value both in people's
personal and professional lives as good health is essential
for meeting the demands of the modern corporate world.
- A growth in insecurity.
This has manifested itself in various forms; health scares (mad
cow disease, dioxide poisoning, genetically-modified foods
etc etc), wars and crime.
The
incapacity of the establishment (the state, institutions and
traditional political parties) to
react to the parlous state of the world economy (financial
scandals, take-overs, mergers and unemployment) has lead
wage earners to loose faith in their managers. The
increasing sense of insecurity has had a direct effect on
consumers which has become a stressed and fearful individual
who needs reassurance.
- the media have
contributed to deepening this climate of insecurity and fear
by their perpetual search for scoops that play upon people's
fears and increase stress and fear. The Internet has also
changed consumer trends, especially marketing and sales. The
exponential growth of e-commerce competes directly
with retail pharmacies. Orthopaedic products, blood pressure
measurers, plasters, OTC medicines and other remedies can
all be bought online. The Internet is world wide and the
growth of figures for online sales is startling. It allows
customers to buy products which cannot be sold in their own
country as there is a lack of legislation which allows
medicines to circulate freely.
Since
this is a serious threat to the retail pharmacy, one must
try to find a answer. People's free time is more important
than the time people spend at work and it is full of stress
and angst. Television fills our living rooms with images of
pain and suffering from all over the globe and catastrophes
are lived in real time, thereby changing citizens' morale
and effecting consumer spending.
Consumers
buy in order to forget, as
a “consumer-orientated society turns into a
consolation-orientated society.
The
growth in the percentage of senior citizens among the
population causes a constant
rise in the demand for goods and services. This sector
of the population becomes ever more important, constituting
50% of the clientele for the entertainment and leisure
industry. Pensioner's purchasing power is far greater than in
the 1960's as is their determination to buy in comparison to
40 years ago. They are full of life and do not stay at home
but travel, dress well, want to stay young, and are not
afraid to spend.
In the United States this
sector of the population has turned out to be a gold mine
for the last 15 years. Intelligent shop owners have been putting
up signs for those who are long sighted, a problem that is
common among older
customers. This slice of the population is linked to certain
values and traditions, and is a very valuable customer due
it their one main characteristic: loyalty. When they
find a shop that is trust-worthy, honest and gives good
advice, they tend to be loyal customers and do not move their
custom elsewhere.
HOW TO
MEET CONSUMERS' EXPECTATIONS
In
France, non-refundable medicine sales were 1.5% of
household expenditure in 1970's, rising to 2.8% in 2000.
According to a survey carried out in the 1970's, the
majority of French people attributed their health to their
doctor and medicines. On the contrary, another survey
carried out between 1995 and 1998 affirms that 72% of French
people thought that their health depended upon their
own care and attention for their own health. This is due the growth in
public health education which has raised awareness and made
consumers more responsible for their own good health.
This
growth in awareness has changed the way people think
about the pharmacy. It used to be thought off as a place
filled with the ill and infirm, where you went with a
prescription to buy the drugs your doctor had prescribed. Today, however,
all this has changed. Pharmacies are full of healthy people
who want to keep healthy, and the pharmacist helps prevent
illnesses and reduces the need to go to the doctor.
The
birth of the modern pharmacist is also linked to the
increase in spending on health products. As welfare states
cut spending on national health services and the amount
citizens spend on health goes up, a two tier health service
is created, one for those who can afford private health
insurance and another for those who are less well-off.
Pharmacists must be able to tackle this difficult situation
and help the consumer when they are in difficulty.
The consumption of organic
foodstuffs has grown 30% in comparison to the 4% growth in
the consumption of the non-organic foodstuffs in recent
years. The organic sector accounts for only a tiny
percentage of the entire market yet fear and insecurity
persuade consumers to buy organic products even if they are
more expensive. The popularity of the organic label has also
been harnessed by pharmacies, such as the French chain
Viadys who registered notable increases in sales after they
inserted slogan referring to the organic sector in their new
sign (“La Santè
Bio”).
There
are over 30 brands of cosmetics that have decided to
obtained the "AB" mark certified by Ecocert. Twelve of these
have already obtained it and have registered a rise in sales
due to the fact the consumers want natural and tested
cosmetic products. Moreover, according to a recent survey
over 78% of women said that they used natural plant-based products tested by a dermatologist when asked what
skincare products they used.
As
consumers only receive partial and incomplete information,
they need help in choosing and precise information.
Generally, consumers do not think that the illustrated
instructions that come with medicines are useful as they are
not clear and difficult to follow. They prefer things to be
explained to them by the pharmacist, something which you can
do by displaying clear and precise information in the shop
window, on shop signs and elsewhere.
To
satisfy people's need for safe and secure medicines, it is
important to stock natural, organic and ecological products.
Pharmacies must cater to consumers demand for more
made-to-measure products and one-to-one relationships and
marketing by moving away from the old mass market consumer
model and listening to what customers want. You cannot
just ask customers to wait their turn and then serve them in a
dismissive way. This type of customer-pharmacist relationship
is destined to disappear.
Pharmacies
are ideally suited to remodel the old customer-pharmacist
relationship as they are normally small and it is easy to
redesign their interior in order to cater to consumer
demands. It is important to bear pensioners' needs in mind
as their custom amounts to around 20% of most pharmacies'
turn over. For example, around 48.5% of bodycare products
are bought by pensioners.
Value-for-money
has become much less important for consumers than
cost-effectiveness since consumers are much more concerned
about a product's effectiveness than its price. In other
words, you can only justify a product's price by
highlighting its benefits.
Pharmacies
must stop being sad, serious, grey, and identical, and start
becoming dynamic, innovative and eco-friendly places buzzing
with special offers and humanitarian values. Promoting charities and humanitarian campaigns is essential
as are screening campaigns and self-testing.
Otherwise consumer trends will not change and customers will
simply enter, choose, buy and leave; never to return again.
HOW
TO SATISFY THESE NEW CONSUMERS
Customers
do not want to just talk about their heath with the
pharmacist but be provided with detailed and specialist
information for solving their problems, such as what type of
exercises are best for that customers particular pain or
what is the latest medicine on the market.
Article
by Pietro Rossi publised on "Il Farmacista",
September 2003
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