Consumers and Non-Consumers of the Boots Company: Chains of Pharmacy in the UK - Research Paper Example

Boots Company is one of the most well-known pharmacies of UK with 3200 stores and supplies over 130,000 pharmacies, doctors and health cares and hospitals (Alliance boots 2009). It has a market share of 17% in the UK and its wholesale department UniChem has 40% of the market share giving it the largest wholesaler position in the UK (Alliance boots 2009). Boots had previously tried to expand globally but were not very successful in having its chain of stores in France Canada, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Japan and Taiwan, US, Switzerland, Kuwait and Hong Kong (Burt 2005).

It sells in these countries via implants in other stores. In Thailand and Ireland, it has its own chain of stores. Alliance Boots has three business units namely retailers, wholesales and contract manufacturers (Knox 2000). Boots mainly deals with hospitals, pharmacies and individual customers. Its products include health care, personal and cosmetic products. Boots manufacturers’ conduct its production on a contract basis and deals with brands like FCUK, Toni and Guy, No. 7 and Kangol (Knox 2000).

Recently, the UK market has been swarmed by departmental stores and stores that have all possible things available with them including products of health and personal care (Burt 2005). Thus customers prefer buying from there rather than going to Boots stores especially to purchase just one thing. This is affecting the sales of Boots. Coupled with that, these stores are technologically very advanced and offer valuable offers to their customers which attract the customers even more (Alliance boots 2009).