The future direction of travel is clear for community pharmacy: a move from a volume driven model to one that is clinically and service driven. What is not so clear for the individual community pharmacy is how they will compete, with whom and for what?

In the past, if you asked the average pharmacist who their customers were the typical answer would have been 'a member of the public entering the pharmacy with a prescription'. Now times have changed and newer markets are opening up for the average pharmacy €“ for example local authorities, clinical commissioners, drug action teams and drug dependency units, care homes, other healthcare professionals, hospitals, prisons and so on.

To effectively compete in a dynamic market place you need a complete understanding of who your customer is. More importantly, you need to analyse your current customer base and your potential future customer base to help understand how you are going to compete in the markets in which these customer segments are located. Customer profiling exercises are very important in aligning the resources in your business to meet the needs of your current and future customer base. There are many resources available that explain how to build up a customer profile for your business, for example at www.businesslink.gov.uk.