In 2025, the turnover of the Italian pharmacy sector exceeded €28 billion. At first glance, this appears to be a positive figure. Yet a closer look reveals a less reassuring trend: volumes are declining. There are fewer customer visits and fewer categories purchased, with the sharpest contraction affecting the commercial segment rather than prescription drugs.

This dynamic is driven by multiple factors: increasing interdependence between channels, pressure on household incomes, changing consumption habits, and new generations that no longer instinctively perceive the pharmacy as a “natural” place to address certain needs. But the issue is not purely macroeconomic. It is also, fundamentally, a retail issue.

Traditionally, pharmacies have built much of their value around advice—or, more accurately, professional consultation. This remains the cornerstone of the relationship with patients and will continue to be so. However, today this is no longer sufficient. Consultation can only be effective if people enter the pharmacy, and it can only fully deliver value if needs are able to surface.

Many needs remain implicit. A patient who comes in to collect an antibiotic, for instance, may not consider addressing an underlying sleep problem—not because it does not exist, but because it is not mentally associated with the pharmacy. Or because the store environment does not activate that need, does not make it visible, legitimate, or relevant.

This is where retail management comes into play. Space, layout, category design, signage, visual language, and customer journeys should not be understood as purely commercial levers, but as tools that enable needs to emerge. A pharmacy that “speaks.” That clearly communicates what it can respond to. One that does not push products, but makes opportunities for care and wellbeing visible—opportunities that customers often do not realize they can find there.

Today’s challenge is not simply to move customers from one product to another within the same need. It is to help new needs emerge, in a way that is coherent with health objectives, aligned with the ethical foundations of the channel, and grounded in trust. The goal is to become a reference point for health and wellbeing as a whole, not only for the issue that prompted the initial visit.

This is where the future of the pharmacy will be shaped. And this is where more advanced management tools are needed—tools designed specifically for pharmacies, rather than borrowed from other retail channels.
Not to replace consultation, but to truly enable it to work.

These challenges are at the core of the Management della Farmacia program directed by Erika Mallarini, which aims to provide management tools specifically designed to support the evolution of the pharmacy sector.

SDA Bocconi School of Management