Winning in Vietnam Retail: Going Phygital

As pharmaceutical companies reshape their commercial models to prepare for the significant shifts in pharma retail, identifying high-potential pharmacies, personalizing engagements, and enabling digital interactions will be crucial to success in the new environment.

This article results from thousands of observations made by POC Pharma's field pharmacists observing transactions at hundreds of pharmacies across Vietnam. We collated the learnings from our clients (top pharma companies), compared our field data with other market research firms, and highlighted the key insights in this simple, actionable summary.

1. Retail Matters

The retail channel is now 2x the size of the hospital channel in Vietnam, and growing faster (source: IQVIA)

Covid-19 has prompted pharma companies to rethink their retail strategies. Pharma companies enacted stay-at-home policies during social distancing restrictions across Vietnam, subbing digital sales tools and virtual meetings for face-to-face visits. Traditional in-person meetings of field representatives with pharmacies became digital (messaging apps like Zalo), accelerating the trend toward digital sales tools.

2. Pharmacist Matters

Over 55% of pharmacy transactions are driven by pharmacist recommendations (Source: Sanisphere POP data)

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an opportunity for pharmacists to deliver more hands-on care to patients by understanding their situation, thus redefining their role in the patient’s journey.

Pharmacist recommendations: 55% of the total pharmacy transactions are driven by pharmacist recommendations. Since pharmacists are well-placed and have long played the role of general practitioners in Vietnam, pharmacists are well-trusted by patients and are expected to play a more involved role in care management and product recommendations.

Patient requests: 39% of the total pharmacy transactions are driven by patients’ requests, up from 36% pre-Covid-19. During the Covid-19 pandemic, patient traffic shifted from the hospital channel to the retail channel, especially for chronic and OTC products. This habit, combined with a general increase in healthcare awareness and knowledge during the pandemic, has led to increased importance of the patient as a transaction driver. Pharmacists also play a major role here as the product or molecule could have been recommended by pharmacists during their previous purchase.

Prescribers: 6% of the total pharmacy transactions post-COVID-19 are driven by prescriptions, down from 9% before the pandemic. However, as the overall retail market has grown significantly since the Covid-19 outbreak, the absolute amount of prescriptions flowing into pharmacies has remained approximately flat.

3. Engagement Matters

Engaging pharmacists has led to market share increases of 30% and higher (Source: POC Pharma promo impact)

Pharmacy coverage and a well-defined customer engagement strategy are critical to capturing opportunities in the retail channel. Pharma companies must ensure they execute the right engagement strategy for their customers (pharmacies) with the relevant brand content & trade programs.

👆 Source: POC Pharma questionnaire covering 2,000 pharmacies)

To complement coverage efforts, identifying pharmacists’ content preferences will further drive recommendations and reduce switching. Our studies show most pharmacists prefer transactional content such as promotional offers, loyalty programs, and paid merchandising. However, many pharmacists also appreciate educational content such as patient education material, symposium invitations, and in-store training.

4. Digital Matters

78% of pharmacists desire digital engagement from pharma companies (Source: POC pharma questionnaire covering 2,000 pharmacies)

73% of pharmacists prefer a combination of physical and digital engagements.” This is great news for the pharma industry as this opens the door for lower-cost engagement alternatives.

Face-to-face engagement with pharmacists remains the core approach to building and maintaining a strong relationship, particularly at the start. However, the impact from incorporating digital can be substantial, leveraging data to customize messages, engagement sequences and trade programs. Given Vietnam’s vast and fragmented pharmacy market, digital engagements also act as a cost-effective solution to expand customer reach and engagement frequency.

How can pharmaceutical companies drive value growth?

Implement data-driven solutions to target the right pharmacists with personalized engagements

PHARMACIST MATTERS

1. Acknowledge the changing market dynamics and shift resources towards the high-growth retail channel.
2. Cover as many pharmacies as you can, leveraging data-driven segmentation based on potential and engagement preferences to allocate resources.

ENGAGEMENT MATTERS

1. Implement loyalty programs as a cost-effective and impactful way to drive sales.
2. Engage with pharmacies to learn what transactional or educational content is important for them to promote your product.

DIGITAL MATTERS

1. Make it easy and convenient for your target pharmacies to know about your product.
2. Develop phygital (physical + digital) approaches to cover more pharmacies efficiently.

IT’S TIME TO START LEVERAGING RETAIL INSIGHTS

Leveraging the right data, analytics, and technologies brings deeper market understanding and drive the best data-driven go-to-market strategy decisions.

Our Solutions

SaaS

• To manage the customer journey efficiently
• To better engage digitally with your customers
• To drive your sales representatives’ performance

Pharmacy Network

• To increase your reach
• To decrease your cost of doing business
• To capture and leverage data

Data

• To know what your battles are and allocate resources accordingly
• To monitor market dynamics and competitors’ performance
• To improve the impact of your activities

👉 If you're looking to strengthen your market share in emerging markets and curious about how to start the data-driven digital journey, drop a message with three simple things:

1. Your company name
2. Your role
3. What problem are you trying to solve

✉️ vien.tran@pharmapoc.com, ✉️ sagar.jain@pharmapoc.com