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Research Article ISSN 2229 – 3795

ASIAN JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT RESEARCH 337

Study on Customer Perception of Planet Health Retail Pharmacy ChainStore at Ahmedabad City

Sunil Patel, Himanshu Barot, Keyur Darji Assistant Professor, K.J. Institute of Management, Vadasma, Gujarat

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

Retailing, it is an emerging trend in the India. It is a proven fact that in India the retail industry has become the 2 nd largest employer after agriculture. The Indian retail market is the 5 th largest retail destination globally. It is estimated to grow from the US $ 266 billion in 2005 to US $ 435 billion by 2010 and US $ 587 billion by 2015. The entry of organized players is changing the face of the pharmacy business, which today is highly fragmented. The retail side too has been posting high growth rates. “The total retail pharmacy market will be growing at a rate of around 15 per cent, while organized retail pharmacy will be seeing a growth of anywhere between 35 and 40 per cent,” according to Technopak Advisors. Besides, the high margins – between 25 and 35 %. This study was conducted to understand the functions of planet health & customer perception towards planet health. The study was carried out at Planet Health Retail Store (Ahmedabad) where the survey has been conducted through questioner. The conclusion of the study shows that as far as CRM and store ambience is concern, they are managed properly, while the product range should extend vertically and horizontally. While testing the hypothesis, it was found that the customer perception towards planet health was on the positive side. Thus the management is making the right moves towards better customer satisfaction.

Keywords: Retailing, Organised, CRM Customer Relationship Management

1. Introduction

The word retail has its origin in French word retailer and means “to cut a piece off’’ or “to break bulk”. The term Retailing is defined as “All activities involved in selling goods and services directly to final consumers for their personal and nonbusiness use”. In simple terms, it implies a firsthand transaction with customer. Retailing involves a direct interface with the customer and the coordination of business activities from end to end right, from the concept or design stage of a product or offering, to its delivery and post delivery service to the customer. The industry has contributed to the fastest changing and dynamic industries in the world today.

Planet health which is a chain pharmaceutical store situated at Gujarat is very much concern about their customers and trying to provide them maximum services through membership program and through other way also. Planet health regularly & consistently tries to improve their


basic functions by modifying them and try to make their customers’ perception positive towards their organisation.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Study of Pharmacy Retail Chains in India

2.2 Apollo Hospital Pharmacy Chain

Apollo Hospital, Chennai has set up a chain of 60 pharmacies under the following categories:

2.2.1. Hospital pharmacies: These are pharmacy stores attached to the Apollo Hospital. They are presently operating at Chennai, Hyderabad, and Delhi. The pharmacy stocks around 6,000 Rx brands/presentations. Almost the entire business comes from Rx products. During the current year, additional hospital pharmacies were planned to be set up at Apollo’s upcoming and new hospital projects at Coimbatore, Madurai, and Chennai.

2.2.2. Clinic pharmacies: These are pharmacy stores attached to an Apollo Clinic. The Clinic pharmacies are attached to Apollo Clinics at Chennai, Hyderabad, and Vishakapatnam. The pharmacy attached to Apollo Clinic, T. Nagar, Chennai has a daily sale of Rs. 60,000. The interior of each pharmacy changes from place to place depending on the availability of space although one common feature is that the furniture is made of white cedar wood finish. All clinic pharmacies are open round the clock, seven days a week.

2.2.3. IOC pharmacies: Apollo has entered into an agreement with IOC, the country’s largest petroleum retail company, to set up around 100 pharmacy stores at their petrol pumps. About 20 such stores have been set up in Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, and Gandhinagar. Under the present arrangement, the Apollo Hospital is required to pay to the IOC a lumpsum amount of annual lease rent based on the location of the respective petrol pump and 4 per cent royalty on the sale of its products.

2.2.4. Standalone Day and Night Pharmacies: Apollo operates around 45 standalone day andnight pharmacy stores. The size of these standalone stores, depending on the location and its residential/ commercial potential, could vary from 150 to 350 sq. ft. Most of the stores in this category, however, are close to 150 sq. ft in size. The standalone locations could include high traffic areas like the airport. All these stores operate on 24x7 format.

2.3. Muthu Pharmacy

Muthu Pharmacy operates a chain of 14 pharmacy stores in Chennai. The main pharmacy located in Pursawalkam area of Chennai has a daily turnover of Rs. 65,000 (70% Rx products and 30% NonRx products). This outlet is considered to be the largestsized pharmacy outlet in South India. The company stocks approximately 8,000 pharmaceutical (Rx plus OTC) products. The pharmacy offers counselling and door delivery facilities to its customers. It proposes to start quick delivery service with two independent telephone lines to book telephonic orders from its customers. It does not believe in offering discounts to its customers as it feels that the customers


are most interested in timely availability of genuine products and quick delivery of required items at the customer’s doorstep.

2.3. Tru Value

Tru Value was a pharmacy chain promoted by TDPL (Tamil Nadu Dadha Products Ltd., a company taken over by Sun Pharma Ltd., Mumbai). The chain operated around 15 pharmacy outlets in Chennai. The outlets used to offer Rx products at an acrosstheboard discount of 10 per cent and hence ran into trouble with the local trade (distributors + retailers). The trade association stopped supplies through its members and the chain was forced to close down its business.

2.4. Other players set to enter

• Pantaloons: Formerly into garments, tied up with Manipal Cure & Care. • Reliance Retail: Diversifying from other fields, tied up with Himalaya Drugs • Cipla Pharmaceuticals • Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited • Fortis Healthcare and • Wockhardt Group • Model Pharmacy

3. Research Methodology

3.1 Objective

To study the customer perception for Planet Health retail pharmacy chain store at Ahmedabad.

3.1 1 Sub objectives • To study store layout and product categories compared to conventional store • To study promotion of OTC products like medical devices, pet range, health and diet

supplements and baby care compared to conventional store • To study the impact of 3P membership (Planet Health Privilege Program) concept to

non member customers.

3.1.2 Research Design & Methods

Type of Research: Exploratory Research

Population / Universe: Members as well as nonmembers customers of Planet Health.

Sample Size: 100 individual customers

Method of Sampling: Non probability and Convenient Sampling

Research instrument

• Primary Sources: Feedback form (Questionnaire)

• Secondary sources: Websites, books and magazines


3.2 Company Scenario

Forget kapda aur makaan. After food and groceries, Indians are said to be spending the maximum amount on healthcare and beauty. According to healthcare industry estimates, the total private expenditure on health is increasing by 27 per cent per annum.

Planet Health, a chain of Retail Pharmaceutical store was set up in 2001 by Mr. Rohit Patel (father of Mr. Ankur Patel), Managing director, Sagar Group of Industries (SGI), Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. The operating philosophy of the business was to provide best service, worldclass ambience and shopping. Planet Health is providing genuine products to their customers. Its tagline is “Planet Health – Because Life is Precious”.

3.3 Corporate Philosophy

The cornerstone of corporate philosophy of SGI was that the law of the land, even though it meant much higher investments in men and materials, must be followed in letter and spirit. This would imply that, for its new venture, among other things, SGI would also have to hire qualified pharmacists, provide airconditioning and refrigeration facilities, arrange standby storage and power supply equipment, and sell all merchandise on bills. This would definitely increase the costs of running the stores compared to the existing drug store format.

3.3 Operating Philosophy

The operating philosophy of the business would be to provide best service and worldclass ambience and shopping experience of pharma products to the customer. This was translated into:

• Genuine and properly stored products. • Healthrelated merchandise including monitoring devices. • Multiple products and brands including Ayurvedic products. • Counselling for proper administration of products especially medicines & for shopping • Home delivery • 24x7 services • Tieup with doctors and other paramedical services • Loyalty programme for a longterm relationship.

3.4 Promotion

Promotion is done by giving discounts, membership schemes; make people aware about spurious drug, by holding different health campaigns. Through promotion planet health clearly differentiate itself with other medical stores. Planet health always tries to make people aware of planet health, their services, medicines, different schemes etc.

Following are the different ways in which planet health makes promotion.


Cool & dry concept (know your medicines): customers are made aware of their medicines, at what temperature drug should be kept and in what condition. Most medicines should be kept below 25 degree but most of people & even medical stores are not aware about that. Improper storage of any product may reduce its potency or affectivity.

Planet health Privilege Programme (3p): This is membership programme for customer. The more the customers spend more discounts they get. Not only customer earns more discounts on increasing purchase but as 3P member also become entitled to a lot of other privileges and benefits. Following are the examples.

• Health card: The health card besides carrying membership particulars, display health and emergency related information to help you obtain emergency help, if so required.

• 3P privilege partner discount: customers can avail discounts of up to 50% on medical services charges levied by some of the well known hospitals, nursing home, consultant doctors, pathology labs, health & fitness club, etc. of the city.

• Free health checkups and counselling camps: Planet health organizes such camps from time to time. 3P members can attend most of them free of charge.

• Special offers, surprise gifts, lucky draws.

• Free home delivery & maintenance of prescription history.

Following are the other different ways of promotion style.

• Planet health put posters to promote their products. They also distribute pamphlets of product awareness, their storage, and genuine medicines. There are posters of devices, sugarless icecreams and many wellness products.

• They held camps to promote their store, their product and main purpose is to give customers better services in cheaper way.

• Store layout also play major role to promote products. • Special discounts for medicines given to customer to regular customer considering as ‘preferred customer’. Discovery coupon given to new 3P members to attract them.

4. Data Interpretation

Table 1: About Store decor or ambience

Excellent(1) Good(2) Average(3) Bad(4) Poor(5)

43 56 1 0 0


Figure 1: Store decor/ ambience

Interpretation: Almost customers are satisfied with the store decor and ambience. 56% of customers arrive at store feel good & 43% feel excellent regarding store decor and ambience. Majority of the customers feel good but not excellent. Still there is an opportunity for the management to improve in store decor or ambience.

Table 2: About Store Layout


37 62 1 0 0

Figure 2: Store Layout

Interpretation: Here almost all customers feel good or excellent about store layout. They can easily find the displayed products that they need. Most of them feel good about store layout and not excellent. So, management should focus on the layout as well.


Table 3: About the product range available in the store


26 40 31 2 1

Figure 3: Product Range

Interpretation: 40% of customers are satisfied with product range available in planet health. But many customer feel average or below average regarding product range. So, planet health should increase product range, new products should be made available in every planet health store as soon as possible. Company should satisfied maximum customer to stay in this competitive market.

Table 4: About Product availability in the store


3 26 45 23 3

Figure 4: Product Availability


Interpretation: Customers perception towards product availability in planet health store is poor. 45% of customers feel average and about 26% feels bad or poor about product availability. Management has to take some action to reduce this level by making the new products available as soon as possible.

Table 5: About attitude of the staff working in the store


53 46 0 1 0

Figure 5: Staff Attitude

Interpretation: Customer perception towards staff was positive. The customers like the way the staff interacted and helped them. Some customers were not satisfied with staff attitude. Lack of knowledge about the product may be the reason for that.

Table 6: About product knowledge of the staff working in the store


5 30 56 9 0


Figure 6: Product Knowledge of Staff

Interpretation:customer felt that product knowledge of staff was average or below average. Many times staff was not able to answer customer questions regarding the usage of the product. Management have to provide some sort of training programme to improve staff knowledge.

Table 7: About the billing & payment system of the store


53 40 7 0 0

Figure 7: Billing and Payment

Interpretation: Billing and payment system of planet health is excellent. According to study, 53% of customers felt excellent about billing and payment system. Few customers were not satisfied with billing and payment system as they need to wait during the rush hours.

4.1 Hypothesis Testing

Null Hypothesis H0: µ < 3; positive perception towards planet health. Alternate Hypothesis: Hα: µ ≥3; negative perception towards planet health

4.1.1 Interpretation

The observed value is more than the critical tabulated value. So we fail to reject the null hypothesis. So, over all perception of customer towards planet health is positive.

4.2 Findings

• The ambience of the store is good as per the survey.

• The store layout is very convenient and the customer finds the display attractive to find the products they need.


• The product range is considered to be average by the customer and is at par with the other retail pharmacy stores.

• Product availability is a issue of concern for the store and the customers have to leave the store without buying the product due to nonavailability.

• The training provided to the staff, in terms of handling customers, is adequate as the customers are found to be satisfied with the service of staff.

• Product knowledge of the staff is inadequate to make the customers understand about usage of product.

• The billing system is good but there need to be two billing counters so that during the rush it reduces the waiting time of the people.

5. Conclusion

The customers feel that the store ambience and decor are up to the mark and does not require changes in it. The store layout is such that the customer find easy to search for the products and also is their way through it. The product range should be expanded both horizontally and vertically to cater the needs of customers. The staffs are adequately trained in handling customers and customer relationship which provides an edge to planet health over other retail store. But the staff needs to be trained in the technical part that is creating understanding about various products and its usage. The billing and payment system is optimised for reduce waiting time. While testing the hypothesis, it was found that the customer perception towards planet health was on the positive side. Thus the management is making the right moves towards better customer satisfaction.

6. References

1. M. Ramesh kanna & Dr. B. Senthil Arasu (2010) “A study on changing Consumers Behaviour towards online marketing with special reference to pharmaceutical products” Consumer Protection & Globalisation, pp 812

2. Abhinandan K Jain, Piyush Kumar Sinha, Preshth Bhardwaj (Oct. Dec. 2006) “Planet Health”, Volume 31, Viklpa (IIMA), pp 93 97

3. Kotler Philip Keller Kevin Lane, Koshy Abraham, Zha Mithileshwar (2008),“Marketing Management: A South Asian Perspective”, 13/e, Pearson Education Ltd., New Delhi

4. Ken Black (2008),“Business Statistics”, 4/e, Chapter no. 9,Wiley India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi

Biographical Notes

1. Mr. Sunil Patel had received M.B.A. degree from HNGU, Gujarat. Presently he is working as Asst. Professor at K.J. Institute of Management, Vadasma, Gujarat382708.


He has 5 years of industrial and 2.5 years of academic experience. His area of interest includes RM, QTA, MR and SDM, Email: [email protected]

2. Mr. Himanshu Barot had received M.B.A. degree from HNGU, Gujarat. Presently he is working as Asst. Professor at K.J. Institute of Management, Vadasma, Gujarat382708. He has 2 years of industrial and 2.5 years of academic experience. His area of interest includes FM, SAPM,CMA and RM, Email: [email protected]

3. Mr. Keyur Darji had received M.B.A. degree from HNGU, Gujarat. Presently he is working as Asst. Professor at K.J. Institute of Management, Vadasma, Gujarat382708. He has 4 years of industrial and 1.5 years of academic experience. His area of interest includes SM, IMC and MM, Email: [email protected]

Disclaimer

Concepts, views, interpretations, analysis shown and expressed in this article are the views of the authors as an outcome of their research/ review work, Integrated Publishing Association have no responsibility in the views and expressions published in this article, for any queries authors can be contacted over the mail id provided.

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