Navigating the Healthcare Counter: An Empirical Study of Consumer Choice and Loyalty Drivers in Pharmacy Retail

Purpose. Pharmacies sit in a rather special place, because they are part of healthcare and part of retail at the same time. Still, there is not much pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing literature on why consumers in the smaller markets of India prefer one organised pharmacy chain over another. What we aim to do in this paper is add a little to the understanding of how healthcare services and pharmacy brands work, by looking at the factors that shape consumer choice and satisfaction at Apollo Pharmacy outlets in Goa.Design/methodology/approach. To find out customer satisfaction levels during the 2024-25 academic year, we gave a structured questionnaire to one hundred (100) respondents chosen by convenience sampling. The questions try to capture satisfaction with nine service attributes, and also overall satisfaction, willingness to recommend and intent to repurchase, all measured on a five-point Likert scale. We report the percentage distributions, the top-two-box scores, and the mean scores with the 95% confidence interval. We also report a weighted-mean ranking of six customer choice criteria.Findings. Customers were in general satisfied. 76% were satisfied and the overall mean was 4.02 on the 5-point scale. The quality of medicines was the aspect they were most satisfied with (3.80). Staff courtesy and speed of service were the least satisfactory, scoring 3.39 and 3.35 respectively. Price came out as the most important choice factor with a mean of 4.37, followed by brand image, availability, quality, staff service and location, although the differences between them were minimal. Availability and price were also what customers complained about most, with 24% and 23% respectively. It is also worth noting that 65% of the customers intended to buy again from the pharmacy, while only 48% would recommend it to other people.Practical implications. The Apollo brand image appeals to customers who are looking for reliable medicine, but price and staff service stand between customer satisfaction and their advocacy. In this context the study points to some key factors for pharmacy managers and pharmaceutical marketers to consider, such as inventory management, discounts and staff training.Originality/value. We think the evidence in this paper is valuable because it presents, in a concise way, the results of a study on one organised pharmacy brand in Goa. The results are laid out so that satisfaction, choice factors and complaint factors can be compared together in a single framework.