Category Captain: Vitamins: Pharmavite

Vitamin manufacturer Pharmavite contends that its category management leadership is making a distinct difference: For the 52-week period ending Aug. 6, category dollar sales grew 4.5 percent for those retailers where Pharmavite is category advisor.

Pharmavite, maker of the popular Nature Made brand, has conducted extensive research showing that consumers who purchase both vitamins and prescriptions within a retailer have significantly higher buying rates. This suggests that converting shoppers to buy both vitamins and their prescriptions within the same retailer for their preventive health-vitamin and treatment health-pharmaceutical drug needs creates a prevention/treatment health regimen mentality that increases shoppers’ overall transaction rates for both of these areas.

According to Pharmavite, most consumers don’t realize that many pharmaceutical drugs deplete important nutrients from people’s bodies. So the manufacturer is working with its retail partners to develop programs to educate consumers on the pharmaceutical drug/vitamin and nutrient depletion relationships and to increase buyer conversion rates.

Pharmavite is also using attitudinal shopper insights to help retailers develop consumer-based strategies and tactics relative to product assortment, promotions, pricing and planogram segmentation. This year, the company integrated a strong focus in its surveys on vitamin consumers’ interest in using digital marketing and social media advertising platforms, and found that there’s a huge gap between the vitamin consumer’s high interest in using mobile applications and the lack of this technology currently available in the vitamin category. This insight has prompted Pharmavite to begin developing digital/mobile advertising and consumer education strategies.