The so-called cross-selling is the process of selling new products and services to existing customers. Research shows that the cost of attracting a new customer is far higher than the income that this customer can generate. The experience of many industries has also confirmed the amazing effect of maintaining old customers: after maintaining the original customers for five years, the customer purchase volume has increased rapidly, from 10% customers to 80% customers buying more than three products. In the process of cross-selling, customers will not simply regard the products and services provided by enterprises as pure transactions, but often feel that there are factors such as friendship, affection, relationship and respect, so they are willing to pay higher prices.
With the introduction of a series of policies to liberalize competition restrictions in the pharmaceutical retail industry in China, and the promotion of related medical reforms such as classified management of prescription drugs and over-the-counter drugs, the profits of the pharmaceutical retail industry are getting meager and the competition is becoming increasingly fierce; At the same time, the pharmaceutical retail industry itself is increasingly showing the characteristics of service industry, and the role of service in the daily operation of pharmacies is becoming more and more prominent. In order to cope with the competition, some domestic pharmacies have increased non-pharmaceutical business items and implemented cross-selling to existing customers.
Cross-selling in retail pharmacies is on the rise.
In recent years, with the rise and expansion of cheap pharmacies, the profits of the pharmaceutical retail industry have been shrinking. For example, there are 5,500 retail pharmacies in Zhejiang Province, employing nearly 30,000 people, with a gross sales margin of 22.9%, an expense ratio of 18.2% and a profit margin of less than 5%. As a result, some pharmacies began to engage in diversified operations, besides drugs, they also operated food, daily necessities and cosmetics and provided various services, and used the existing customer base for cross-selling in an attempt to improve profit margins.
On the whole, the cross-selling scale of domestic retail pharmacies is still relatively small, and the proportion of non-pharmaceutical sales is mostly less than 20%.
Present situation of cross-selling in fair-price pharmacies
In recent years, cheap pharmacies that have mushroomed in some cities often win the market at low prices. Apart from lower drug prices than other pharmacies, this kind of cheap pharmacies usually implement diversified operations and sell "own brand products", that is, some large-scale manufacturers order products according to their own requirements. Generally, this kind of products have lower cost, lower sales price and guaranteed quality. Fair-price pharmacies will become their own brands, and their gross profit margin will have great room for improvement. Cheap pharmacies can make higher profits by using such products, which can keep other products at a lower price level.
However, the implementation process of the low-price strategy of cheap pharmacies is not smooth sailing, but is influenced by many factors, and at least one cost bottom line cannot be broken. To this end, some low-priced big pharmacies try to cross-sell customers on the basis of low prices in order to further expand sales. For example, two pharmacies in Zhengzhou, "Healthy People" and "People's Edge", have set up non-drug sales areas, and women's care products such as shampoo, shower gel, facial cleanser, freckle cream, toothpaste, toothbrush and soap, and even cleaning products such as detergents and disinfectants have been put on the shelves, and individual brands of care products have also set up counters. Similarly, Hangzhou "Tiantianhao" drugstore sells green food, home improvement products and daily necessities while selling medicines.
There are two main ways to cross-sell these cheap pharmacies.
First, subdivide the existing buyer's behavior, find out the consumer groups with different characteristics, and analyze their consumption psychology; We should promote sales for all kinds of consumer groups, adopt more targeted sales positioning and publicity strategies for different consumption types, and cross-sell, such as promoting health care products for the elderly in traditional festivals and promoting children's health care products to a family of three.
Secondly, collect customer information through customer service center, questionnaire survey, promotion feedback and other channels, and then analyze the relevant information through CRM, and summarize the data that is instructive for market decision-making. For example, some big pharmacies implement membership system, give preferential treatment to members, create virtual online pharmacies on the basis of physical pharmacies, develop e-commerce, and use their own websites for cross-selling. Some large pharmacies combine the information of customers when they apply for membership cards, the information entered when they register on the website and the sales records of the POS system of the cash register in the store, collect customer information, and provide the system with certificates that members suffer from chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes, so that these members can enjoy a certain discount when purchasing related drugs; At the same time, pharmacists in pharmacies will scientifically and reasonably guide customers to buy drugs and cross-sell them according to the information in the system.
Present situation of cross-selling in community chain pharmacies
At present, more and more pharmaceutical retail chain enterprises will extend their tentacles to urban residential areas or crowded places to carry out various convenience services. These community chain pharmacies often have a small business area and few staff, and fully provide convenient services for residents in terms of location, time and drug packaging specifications. Under normal circumstances, the drug price of community chain pharmacies is slightly higher than that of drug chain stores and cheap pharmacies, mainly to meet the emergency and convenience needs of customers, and some pharmacies even provide 24-hour free door-to-door service. Chengdu Jiuding Pharmacy and Xinglin Pharmacy have long-term experts to provide free consultation services to guide patients to correctly choose and use drugs and verify prescriptions for patients. At the same time, these chain pharmacies also sell health care products, cosmetics, daily necessities and so on. And provide convenience for customers through cross-selling, so as to retain old customers. People Tongtai Pharmaceutical Chain Store of Harbin Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. has launched special services such as children's medicine counter, expensive medicine counter, health care product counter, 24-hour medicine delivery service and digital color expansion business, which have been welcomed by customers. Fuji Pharmacy, a subsidiary of Shanghai Leiyunshang Pharmaceutical Chain Store Co., Ltd., has not only set up shelf counters, but also set up a special pharmacy consultation area, pharmacy data cabinets and electronic medicine calendar files. By establishing a medicine calendar system, it records, analyzes and guides consumers' purchase behavior and carries out cross-selling.
Although the scale of community chain pharmacies is far less than that of cheap pharmacies, because the target market is relatively fixed and the customer base is relatively single, community chain pharmacies can also give full play to their time and location advantages, cross-sell and achieve good sales performance. Many community chain pharmacies have a group of loyal customers, especially some patients who have been taking drugs for a long time. Some community chain pharmacies combine with local community health stations and clinics to understand the health status of customers within the scope of pharmacies. Some community chain pharmacies also help customers who often come to buy medicines to establish a "medicine calendar", which is made with color cards to record the variety and quantity of medicines purchased each time. According to the importance of customers, customers are classified with different color cards, giving full play to the advantages of community chain pharmacies, bringing the relationship between pharmacies and community residents closer, and cross-selling customers at the same time.
Improve customer loyalty through cross-selling
Compared with pharmacies that do not carry out cross-selling, pharmacies that use cross-selling as a marketing tool have improved their ability to explain the formation of customer loyalty with customer satisfaction. This means that for the same level of customer satisfaction, relationship trust and switching costs, pharmacies that implement cross-selling will gain higher customer loyalty than pharmacies that do not. Customer loyalty can not only bring immediate benefits to pharmacies, but also bring sustainable long-term value to pharmacies. Therefore, improving customer loyalty is undoubtedly a good way for all kinds of pharmacies to seek a breakthrough in the highly competitive pharmaceutical retail market.
To implement cross-selling, pharmacies need to do the following work:
First of all, collect, sort out and analyze the relevant information of existing customers, including the basic demographic information of customers, customer purchase records, customer demand information and other kinds of information related to customers. Through the analysis and processing of these data information, we can acquire knowledge about customers, so as to carry out cross-selling services in a targeted manner.
The second is to understand the overall scale and demand of the market segments faced by pharmacies, and to master the competition of cross-selling pharmacies in the same market, so as to adopt targeted marketing strategies in cross-selling.
Thirdly, according to the obtained market information, the product portfolio is configured. Judging from the actual situation of cross-selling in pharmacies in China, in addition to drugs, pharmaceutical services and other health care services, non-pharmaceutical products are mainly health food, daily necessities and cosmetics. I have made a questionnaire survey in three cities, and the data obtained show that the commodities that consumers buy most in cross-selling pharmacies are health food (60.59%), daily necessities (45.34%), cosmetics (35.72%), medical devices (17.63%) and health consultation services (65538). As for "what other products do you want to buy?" The first items that consumers answered were: daily necessities (47.58%), food (39.80%), cosmetics (34.33%), health consultation service (23.40%), medical devices (20.25%) and medical consultation service (65,438+).
Fourth, adopt effective communication strategies to transmit the information of related products and services to the existing customers who are most likely to buy. Judging from the current practice of domestic retail pharmacies, e-mail, mailing product information advertisements and telephone calls are all effective ways of information communication. In addition, for some community chain pharmacies, because they are close to community residents, some cross-selling pharmacies adopt the communication strategy of home visits.
Promote the formation and improvement of customer loyalty by improving customer satisfaction.
In pharmacies with cross-selling, the contribution of customer satisfaction to the formation of customer loyalty is much higher than that of pharmacies without cross-selling. Therefore, cross-selling pharmacies need to pay more attention to the cultivation of customer satisfaction. The main purpose of customer satisfaction management in pharmacies is to eliminate or weaken the factors of customer dissatisfaction. When cross-selling pharmacies provide more kinds of products and services according to the needs of existing customers, they also need to care about the perceived quality of services provided by pharmacies. Because cross-selling is a new marketing method, customers can't expect the products and services cross-sold by pharmacies, so "expectation" and "inconsistency" can't be the factors that determine customer satisfaction, only the perceived quality of customers ultimately determines the customer's satisfaction with pharmacies.
At the same time, pharmacies that implement cross-selling need to weaken and eliminate some factors that easily lead to customer dissatisfaction in time. Therefore, pharmacies that carry out cross-selling should strengthen the training of employees, change employees' concepts, emphasize service awareness, strengthen the management and assessment of employees, and especially strengthen the management of promoters sent directly to pharmacies by manufacturers.
It is not necessary to invest too much in cross-selling pharmacies to maintain the switching cost of customers at a suitable level.
Judging from the current situation of domestic retail pharmacies, most pharmacies increase the switching cost of consumers by increasing the opportunity cost of switching pharmacies. The specific methods include: handling membership cards and giving members a certain percentage of discounts; Give rewards or exchange opportunities regularly or irregularly according to customers' consumption points; Maintain consumers' repeated purchase behavior through holiday price reduction promotion activities, and so on. These practices further reduce the profit margins of retail pharmacies with limited profit margins. After cross-selling, pharmacies can appropriately reduce the cost of these promotional activities, such as appropriately raising the threshold for members to enjoy certain shopping discounts, or reducing the proportion of shopping discounts given to members, or reducing the value of products or services that can be rewarded or exchanged for the same number of points, and so on. These practices will reduce the switching cost of existing customers in pharmacies to a certain extent. However, according to my research results, this moderate reduction in switching costs will not have a significant impact on the reduction of customer loyalty. To take a step back, even if pharmacies are unwilling to bear the risk of declining customer loyalty and cut the cost of maintaining consumer switching costs, then pharmacies only need to maintain the same efforts as the original level in this respect, and do not need additional efforts. Pharmacies that carry out cross-selling can obtain higher customer loyalty than those that do not carry out cross-selling.