Relationship Marketing Practices in Community Pharmacies in Nigeria

Ihekoronye Romanus Maduabuchi,Erhun Oyekigho Wilson,Osemene Kanayo Patrick

doi:10.21315/mjps2020.18.2.3

Ihekoronye Romanus Maduabuchi, Erhun Oyekigho Wilson + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.21315/mjps2020.18.2.3

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Abstract

The study identified the types of relationship marketing (RM) practices, determined the components of RM that fostered customer loyalty (CL) and evaluated the influence of the RM components on CL in community pharmacies. It was a cross-sectional survey of community pharmacies, pharmacists, non-pharmacist staff and customers. Random sampling was employed to select 40 community pharmacies, while purposive sampling was used to select four staff from each of the community pharmacies (160). Accidental sampling was used to select 510 customers of the pharmacies. Data were obtained with the questionnaire and analysed using appropriate descriptive and inferential statistics. Social RM practices yielded optimal results. The RM components that were determined were trust (TR), commitment (CMT), competence (CP), communication (CM), conflict handling (CH) and accessibility, which accounted for 55.4% of the total variance that occurred in CL. All the components of RM had positive but significant influence on CL with varying magnitudes. The study revealed that the types of RM practices in community pharmacies were the giving of loyalty gifts to customers, personalised telephone CMs, calling customers by name and special greeting codes. Also, special discounts and credits were offered to certain customers in order to build relationships. All the RM components positively influenced CL. Easy A to the pharmacies and pharmacists proved to be most influential in building loyalty followed by CM. The study concluded that RM practices in community pharmacies hold a lot of promise for community pharmacies to sustain their existing customers.

Highlights

Community pharmacy practice is shifting from traditional dispensing to pharmaceutical care services which most patients are not too willing to pay for (Tootelian, Rolston and Negrete2005; Law, Okamoto and Brook 2008; Garcia et al 2009; Wood et al 2011)
The most commonly employed relationship marketing (RM) practice among the pharmacies was the giving of loyalty gifts (87.5%) during festive seasons
Only 12.5% of the pharmacies offered home delivery services. This could be attributed to incurring more expenses in terms of logistics and finance

Summary

Introduction

Community pharmacy practice is shifting from traditional dispensing to pharmaceutical care services which most patients are not too willing to pay for (Tootelian, Rolston and Negrete2005; Law, Okamoto and Brook 2008; Garcia et al 2009; Wood et al 2011). Community pharmacies may have to seek other strategic options to remain in business. One of such options is relationship marketing (RM). Most RM studies and established practice experiences, are outside the community pharmacy environment (Wood et al 2011; Hoffman and Birnbrich 2012). Majority of people may not be aware of the extended roles of pharmacists, more so when there is dearth of information about the competencies for effective relational marketing in the Nigeria community pharmacy marketplace. It is not known which components of RM yield best outcomes. Community pharmacies must identify key drivers of RM that foster customer loyalty (CL)

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