retailing

Today let me don my marketing hat and try to evaluate something very personal. I am trying my first major analysis of a trend. Dont get shocked, its not gonna be something high fundoo and laden with creativity, but its gonna be something which I have witnessed more often in the recent past. Am talking about the entry of full scale retailing in the medical sector.

I may sound pretty like a layman while trying to attempt this, but i think I can get that much leeway. So let me start.

Retailing can be defined as "Consists of those business activities involved in the sale of goods and services to consumers for their personal, family, or household use." (thats a defination from prentice hall website). As we can see, it involves direct contact with the end user. Its very easy to understand the concept of retailing, visualizing a mom-n-pop shop owner trying to sell a commodity to you. There you are the end user and he is addressing some need of yours. Whatever you get from him, as per your demand and requirement, in all likelihood you would the consumer or someone in your household. So this is what retailing can be understood as. Now, you would ask me as to how I am saying this is a trend in the medical field. Well, then read along.

You all must have heard or seen something which reads like this :

Kaya Skin Clinic http://kayaclinic.com

Well, thats something which is quite visible. Some other thing which you may not have seen but might be affected some day is like this :

Wellspring laboratories http://www.wellspring.in

Now let us try and understand them.

Kaya is a venture by Marico Industries Ltd. and deals with complete skin care. If you visit any of their centre, you would find a mix of a beauty parlour with amalgamated with your local dermatologist. And this presents a beautiful concept, of course, "beautiful" literally. Dermatologists have till now in Indian society always been a referral doctors. We have this tendency to approach a physician first of all, for any problem that we think is there with out body system. This physician then acts as a watershed and directs us to the required doc of our need. Though this attitude is changing now a days and has changed significantly in the learned classes. What Kaya is doing is trying to bypass the physician or any other doctor of that sort, and get you to the direct point of contact, the dermatologist. Though this requires, an awesome amount of awareness to be created, I think they are being successful at the same. It brings in a fantastic mix of corporate marketing with basic medicine. They are targeting right now generally at the upper middle class( afterall its very true that the lower class finds it tough to even meet the daily vitamin requirement, leave aside getting a healthy skin). They have concentrated more on print and word-of-mouth media than on the audio-visual. This was the good side of the project. The good that I think they did is to make medicine a lil more glamourous for the customer.

Now let me see the flip side. It looks more like a saloon. A typical service industry place. So much finesse has gone in the furnishing of the retailing side that I guess they might loose out on the medical aspect. They still cant sideline a local dermatologist. They havent yet made it amply clear that each centre is headed by a dermatologist. They look more of beauty experts rather then skin clinic (which they proclaim). Also, the prices are directed more to the upper middle class and that should be limiting the affordability. They can start having packages at more varied pricing points.

So, I think kaya needs to strike a better balance between the therapeutic aspect and the beauty role.

Lets see something about Wellspring. Wellspring is a chain of laboratories started by the Nicolas Piramal India Ltd (NPIL) as it is said. Headed by Dr. Swati Piramal, wife of Mr. Ajay Piramal. This too is a nice case of retailing. Till now, pathology laboratories have been the backdoor performers in the medical fraternity. They were widely respected by their peers but they were not regarded as brands by the local population. There have been famous local players but nobody had anything of a regional presence, leave aside national. But with labs such as Thyrocare, SRL Ranbaxy, Wellspring, Metropolis, etc this is undergoing a radical change. We are seeing efforts being made by these labs to approach the patient on their own. Its something like Intel coming up with the "intel inside" campaign. But this is even bigger. By getting accreditation and later on consolidating, these labs are trying to gain a better ground in medical retailing. They are becoming iconic brands in front of the patient. The direct consumer. This could in turn, give them a better ground in front of the intermediary physician ( thats probable only if they dont alienate the doctors too much, by trying to be bigger these ageing medical icons). Coming up with packages like lipid profile, etc. they are trying to tap the Primary health care and the preventive health care market. More likely the latter. This does provide them access to a huge potential wherein the physician's reference is not that much required. Whether the physicians accept this trend or not, the consumers ("patients" would not be appropriate here) would rule the roost. These labs are prying on the basic dream of each person, to live a healthy life. Creating awareness, to the extent of a phobia, is the name of the game. Lets see how the market warms up to the reaction.

The major areas where there would be action, would be governed by :

• the medical fraternity, esp the physicians.
• the local lab players, who currently are very fragmented(but have a nice rapport with the local medical community)
• the corporate hospitals (who can enter this field on their own, as they have the required managerial experience and the established brand name)
• awareness in the population of their rights and needs

So i guess, I have tried my dumb mind to do some evaluation.
Would do more of this in future,
till then,
ciao.