Abstract

With the focus of the scholars and literature on the importance of customer value, the emphasis has been paid to this concept in a great number of retailing specialties, but it was neglected in the case of community pharmacies. This research focuses on the service value, trust and employee performance as factors explaining loyalty to pharmacies and adds the verification of the impact of the integration of primary healthcare services as a way to enhance or sustain the level of loyalty to the initial pharmacy or switching intentions toward other pharmacies which integrate this kind of service. Thus, an original conceptual model is proposed and tested. A survey was distributed electronically via a social media application (WhatsApp) to participants based on the convenience sampling technique. 492 respondents submitted the survey. Results show that perceived value, employee performance and trust influence initial loyalty. In addition, the integration of Primary Healthcare services sustains this loyalty, but initial loyalty does not prevent switching intentions in case other pharmacies integrate primary healthcare services.

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