Riassunto analitico
In 2009 with Law number 69 (18th June) and its subsequent approval into legislative decree later in October (Legislative Decree number 153, 3rd October 2009) Italian pharmacies were officially defined to be “national health care system services operators.”. This change has brought retail pharmacies to become not only simply drugs seller but to enlarge their offer with health care primary services which could alleviate the stress from hospitals and the main primary care institutions of the country.
Moreover, this continued to be a focus for the next decades where several different legislative decrees and laws have been brought in the legislative scenario to accelerate the evolution of pharmacies. Interestingly, among many others 16th December 2010 ministerial decree has finally agreed in the definition of “pharmacy of services”.
This has not only been a major step forward the importance and relevance of retail pharmacies in the health care system, but this has meant that now pharmacies have a greater social responsibility in delivering a vast range of services that could potentially be from the most technical and medical to the most commercial and strategical as possible.
However, if on one side these transformations are changing the way in which retail pharmacies are seen in the Italian society today. On the other side, they require a set of managerial and business-oriented knowledge to evolve their business typically product oriented in a more diverse one which include services as main contributors of the traffic within the store.
Consequently, not only the entire business model has to be revised but also the entire approach toward the selling aspect must be renovated, offering an enlarged and comprehensive customers/patient experience.
In this scenario, the current global pandemic SARS-Cov-2 has simply accelerated this transformation and has emphasized the willingness to change and adapt of SMEs in general and in particular of pharmacies which have never been more challenged than now.
Therefore, it will be particularly important to concentrate the attention on how business models could change in response of diverse conditions in which they operate and more importantly which are the factors that should be taken into consideration in doing so.
First, the next pages will properly introduce the sector in which Italian pharmacies are operating, analyzing their role, offer and characteristics, to then contextualize the entire operations in the demand side. Finally, considerations on future developments and scenario will be considered. Lastly, an overview of the literature will be necessary to later analyze a set of data extracted from a local survey, where the theoretical construct are going to be examined.
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