Assessment of Business Strategy in Independent High Street Pharmacy (2013)

This dissertation looks at the role and function that strategy currently plays, and could potentially play, in independent high street pharmacy. This area was chosen for three major reasons; Firstly there are unique characteristics in pharmacy businesses which are not seen in any other retail or healthcare environment. Secondly, the challenges facing the healthcare sector require the need for response and change from people who are not trained in key business skills. Thirdly, there is potential for a key role for business strategy in assisting and directing these business survive and adapt.

The underlying details will be described more fully below. Before considering in more detail these matters, it is important to take some time to summarise the role and function of pharmacy. This will serve to set the scene for the rest of the dissertation so I have taken some space to go into detail. There are a number of papers in the literature which deal directly with the position of Pharmacy and the challenges it faces, but many of these focus on expanding pharmacy’s role through incursion into clinical areas such as advice and prescribing powers.

There appear to be none which seek to look at the role of pharmacy through the use of strategy across the three areas of pharmacy businesses (NHS prescriptions, OTC and other retail). It is suggested that in particular, the use of business strategy tools in the non NHS side of the business has the potential to yield interesting and useful results for these organisations. The objectives of this dissertation are as follows;

• To critically evaluate the literature on strategy so as to shed light on strategy and strategic planning in pharmacy.
• To apply a mixed methods approach to examine the current understanding and application of strategic models and assess the appetite for strategy knowledge acquisition in pharmacy.
• To develop a set of recommendations that will provide a sound basis for further research and engagement with pharmacy and to propose business models that could be put to use.

• 15,000 words – 60 pages in length
• Excellent use of literature
• Good analysis of subject area
• Well written throughout
• Includes survey questions
• Ideal for MBA and business management students

1: Introduction
Pharmacy in the UK
Business Structure
Restrictions on Entry
UK Changes
Key Challenges
Pharmacy Education
Literature Review
Dissertation Objectives

2: Literature Review
Defining Strategy
Different Disciplines of Strategy
Strategy as Planning
Strategy as Competitive Positioning
Strategy as Core Competency
Strategy as Learning
Empirical Underpinning
Chaos Theory

3: Research Methodology
Sampling
Survey
Interview and Field Observations
Research Practice to Date
Review of Pharmacy Literature
Survey
Interview Structure Development
Field Observation
Issued of Data Validity and Reliability
Further issues of Data Analysis

4: Analysis of the Results
Survey
Implications for Strategy
Pharmacy Visits
Interviews

5: Conclusions and Recommendations
Methodological Issues
Potential for Business Strategy Models
Conclusions
Discussion
Recommendations
Concluding Comments

Appendix Section

References