Peculiarities of effective management of products assortment depending on different sizes of pharmacy chains
Authors: Posilkina Olga , Bondarieva Iryna , Malyi Volodymyr , Timanyuk Iryna , Mala Zhanna 
Published: May 2021

The aim of the work is to study the features of effective management of product's assortment in small, medium and large pharmacy chains.

Materials and methods. The study of the features of the assortment policy of pharmacies that are part of pharmacy chains of different sizes was conducted using a questionnaire of 421 heads of pharmacies. The relationship between the size of the pharmacy chain and the approaches used to form the product's assortment is studied and the presence of the procedure of product's assortment formation in pharmacies is analyzed using Pearson's criteria c2 and c2 maximum likelihood (M-L c2). The importance of the influence of the size of the pharmacy network on the scores of the efficiency of the business process of forming the product range, as well as its width and intensity of updating using non-parametric analysis of variance Kraskal-Wallis; Manfer-Whitney test with Bonferroni correction for pairwise comparisons of pharmacy network clusters and correlation analysis. The presence of drugs in treatment protocols was analyzed using the Z-test to compare the frequency of drug administration. Peculiarities of introduction and withdrawal of drugs and medical products to the range of different size pharmacy chains criteria c2 Pearson's and maximum likelihood (M-L c2) are determined. System and logical analysis is used to systematize the existing approaches to product's assortment management in pharmacy chains of different sizes.

Results. It is established that with the increase in the size of pharmacy chains the tendency to use a centralized approach to the analysis and formation of the range in chains increases, when the list of assortment items is fully created and approved at the head office of the chain. The importance of the relationship between the breadth of the assortment of pharmacies and the size of the chain, which includes a pharmacy. Thus, large and mega-chains support the assortment, which on average includes up to 8.5 thousand items of medicines and medical devices, medium - 4-5 thousand assortment's items, and in half of the establishments of small pharmacy chains the range may include from 2,5 to 3 thousand names of medicines and medical devices. It is established that regardless of the size of the pharmacy chain, the inclusion of medicines / medical products in the range of pharmacies most often takes into account the factor of seasonality of demand and taking into account the core range, i.e. the list of 100-150 most popular items in the pharmaceutical market. When withdrawing medicines or medical products from the assortment of pharmacies from all three clusters are often guided by indicators of low profitability of sales and lack of orders for goods for more than three months.

Conclusions. The analysis of the assortment policy of pharmacy chains of different sizes showed that in most of the studied institutions it is quite effective. The obtained results allow us to conclude that the effectiveness of the formation and analysis of the assortment is achieved through the use of different approaches to the centralization of this business process depending on the size of the pharmacy chain