- New study: 80 percent of pharmacists say their customers' buying behavior has changed in the face of inflation. 

- 57 percent of pharmacists note: Their customers ask more frequently for cheaper product alternatives. In these cases, manufacturers' advertising investments pay more attention to the category than to the brand. 

- Bonsai ApoVote shows: 42 percent of pharmacies sell fewer products overall.

Hamburg/Bremen, October 19, 2022. Bonsai Health today publishes the latest figures from Bonsai ApoVote - the representative survey of pharmacists in Germany. Bonsai Health is the health and pharma unit of Bonsai Research.

80 percent of pharmacists say: Inflation
has changed customers' buying behavior

The most important - and worst - news for brand-name manufacturers is that 57 percent of pharmacies are finding, in the face of inflation, that customers are asking more often for lower-priced products.

"The fact that there is an increased demand for low-cost alternatives must be an alarm signal for every brand manufacturer," emphasizes Bettina Mertens-Danowski, Head of Bonsai Health.

"Brand manufacturers are at risk of losing market share if customers are aware of their advertising but then specifically ask for cheaper generics," adds Dirk Hamann, Head of Bonsai Analytics. If the campaigns - now in the fall, for example, for cold remedies and/or products to strengthen the immune system - pay more attention to the category than to the brand, the return on investment (ROI) drops.

Another consequence of inflation is that more than half of pharmacists have not yet noticed any reluctance to buy. But already 42 percent of those surveyed say that fewer products are being sold in their pharmacy overall. 38 percent say that sales per purchase are falling. 

Conclusion
Savings are also being made in the area of health. Most pharmacies are observing increasing price sensitivity on the part of customers - and many are also seeing a decline in demand. Fear of supply bottlenecks or further price increases is not currently evident in purchasing behavior; "hoarding purchases" are the exception. Only ten percent of pharmacists have noticed that more is being bought in stock.

Contact

Bettina Mertens-Danowski
Head of Bonsai Health
Bettina.Mertens-Danowski@bonsai-research.com
+49 406077681-26

About Bonsai ApoVote

Bonsai ApoVote offers companies the opportunity to quickly and representatively collect opinions from pharmacists on current topics. The basis for this is the Bonsai pharmacy panel for online surveys. For the current survey on the influence of inflation on purchasing behavior, 256 pharmacists in owner or management positions were interviewed in August - representative of stationary pharmacies in Germany.

About Bonsai Health

Bonsai Health is the unit of Bonsai Research in which research, analysis and consulting for the pharmacy and healthcare industry have been bundled since this year. At Bonsai Health, sales data (directly from the pharmacies' merchandise management system) and survey data (from the Bonsai pharmacy panel) are combined with qualitative research on health brands and topics. www.bonsai-health.com