Meagher’s Pharmacy Group is a drug and pharmaceutic store with retail sales through traditional channels and proprietary website. Engaging in multichannel sales has allowed them to expand their customer outreach.
How the hybrid‑retail business model has transformed an Irish pharmacy
Abstract
The Meagher’s Pharmacy Group is a drug and pharmaceutical store. As well as a retail offering, the group offers consulting services for patients. The Meagher’s Pharmacy Group was opened in 1921 as a family business. The firm was taken over by Ms Oonagh O’Hagan in 2001, but its reputation as a ‘community pharmacy’ remains at the core. There are now over nine brick-and-mortar stores across Ireland.
The greatest barrier to going digital was the lack of digital skills among staff. The majority of Meagher’s Pharmacy Group staff are chemists. Within Ireland, it is challenging for resource constrained small firms to compete with multinationals for talent and Meagher’s Pharmacy Group seeks guidance on how to access digital skills and finance a digital strategy. The need for digital skills is transversal across sectors and a wide variety of jobs. Mastering the use of productivity tools like Microsoft Word, Excel and computer literacy are ranked as some of the most transversal digital competencies across a large variety of job contexts according to OECD calculations (OECD, 2021[2]).
In 2020, 24% of small and 37% of medium enterprises in the Ireland had a website allowing for online ordering, above the OECD averages of 25% and 21% respectively for each type of business (OECD, 2021[1]). As well as their traditional retail channels, physical “brick and mortar” stores, Meagher’s Pharmacy has expanded its online offering moving towards e-commerce sales.
The shift to a hybrid-retail business model has increased the firm’s efficiency, helped reduce costs and freed up administration time. Beyond this, the firm now has access to new markets and consumers across Ireland and globally.
Meagher’s Pharmacy Group has not participated in any government (national or local) programmes and is unaware if there are initiatives that could be relevant to them.
OECD (2021), The Digital Transformation of SMEs, OECD Studies on SMEs and Entrepreneurship, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/bdb9256a-en.
OECD (2021), SME Digitalisation to Build Back Better, https://doi.org/10.1787/f493861e-en
References
[1] OECD (2021), ICT Access and Usage by Businesses, https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ICT_BUS# (accessed on 15 November 2022).
[2] OECD (2021), OECD Skills Outlook 2021: Learning for Life, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/0ae365b4-en.
