Suppliers of medicines are unanimous that women's health has
been ignored until recently. However, effort seems to be made to
deal with this situation. "The majority of [drug store] shoppers
are women and always has been," said Jon Fiume, vice president
of retail operations and natural products of Ritzman Pharmacies.
"Certainly, there's been some different approaches to packaging
and things of that sort to attract the [female] shopper in a
stronger way than before."
Drugstores and food chains with strong pharmacy businesses, have
made inroads in dealing with women's health. This resulted in
better availability of literature. Moreover, pharmacists are
better-informed to answer customer questions.
Others decided to provide better access to women's
health-related products and information in their stores. CVS,
for example, has introduced a series of in-store initiatives
aimed at creating a more female-friendly shopping environment.
CVS has recently started to develop a redesigned beauty care
department. The set was moved to the front of its stores and a
special display unit, Healthy Women, was used as a "window" into
more traditional health care, leading the customer from beauty
into the OTC quadrant of the store. Such actions as introducing
a "look-good/feel-good" marketing strategy, the Healthy Women
set showcases beauty care, natural health and more conventional
OTC products, grouped together to reflect a particular issue in
women's health. It is changed every two months. Currently, CVS
Healthy Women is concentrated on breast cancer awareness.
But such actions are not necessarily aimed at attracting more
women into the drugstore. Frankly speaking, it could be very
difficult due to the fact that 75%-80%of all drugstore customers
are women. The real problem is to drive up the total
marketbasket of those female shoppers. "If you support [a
dedicated section] with cross-merchandising and educational
[materials] ... you'll get multiple purchases," said Bayer
Consumer Care marketing director for nutritionals Michaela
Griggs.
Ritzman takes more of a detailed approach to promote women's
health. The chain has created dedicated supplement sections to
focus on
heart
health, bone health, osteoporosis, PMS and menopause. But
Ritzman promotes other more traditional OTC women's
health-related items, such as OTC menstrual pain medications,
migraine-indicated analgesics and therapeutic hand lotions in
line with its other Pain relief and skin care offerings. "Thanks
to this, women are more likely to shop the entire store looking
for specific products rather than perusing just one specific
section" Fiume said.
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