The health and wellness landscape is undergoing a profound transformation. Retailers—especially grocers and pharmacy chains—are uniquely positioned to redefine how consumers access and experience care. As digital and decentralized health services gain widespread acceptance, the lines between pharmacy, grocery, and wellness are blurring. Today’s consumers expect a holistic, unified journey that seamlessly integrates their health, nutrition, and wellness needs—whether they’re shopping in-store, online, or engaging with a pharmacy or wellness service.
Yet, many retailers face a common challenge: siloed operations and fragmented data across pharmacy, grocery, and wellness offerings. This fragmentation makes it difficult to deliver the consistent, personalized experiences that customers now demand. The opportunity is clear: by breaking down these silos and embracing digital transformation, retailers can unlock new value, drive loyalty, and become trusted partners in their customers’ health journeys.
Publicis Sapient partners with leading retailers to help them seize this opportunity. Our approach is grounded in practical, actionable solutions that address the unique challenges of integrating pharmacy, grocery, and wellness services:
- Health & Wellness Strategy Activation: We help retailers assess their ideal use cases and target audiences, building a cohesive strategy for health and wellness products, services, and marketing—from ideation through execution. This enables rapid entry into the wellness market and accelerates ROI.
- Omnichannel Pharmacy Experience: By synchronizing data across systems into a centralized customer profile, we ensure that patients have a familiar, trusted experience in every store, online, and even when calling in. This unified approach enables targeted personalization, cross-sell, and upsell opportunities, strengthening both pharmacy and retail brands.
- Retail Health Service Delivery Modernization: Our modern, scalable architecture integrates front- and back-of-stage systems, making it easy to add new partners and features, keep up with regulations, and deliver a seamless, repeatable customer experience.
- Retail Health Patient Engagement: We leverage brand equity and customer data to build loyalty and drive valuable cross-sell and upsell opportunities between pharmacy and grocery. By establishing a unified customer profile and connected engagement strategy, we help retailers grow share-of-wallet and deepen patient relationships.
- Health Data Lake: Our HIPAA-eligible data-as-a-service solution removes data silos, providing a chronological view of individual or population health data for analytics at scale. This enables predictive and preventive management of patient health, unlocking actionable insights for both business and care delivery.
Drawing from our experience with leading retailers, several best practices emerge for creating patient-centric, connected health journeys:
- Human-Centered Design: Start with a deep understanding of customer needs, pain points, and behaviors. Co-create solutions with patients, caregivers, and providers to ensure digital journeys are intuitive and empathetic.
- Personalization at Scale: Leverage data and modular architectures to deliver tailored experiences—whether it’s medication reminders, financial support tools, or wellness recommendations.
- Seamless Omnichannel Integration: Ensure customers can move effortlessly between digital and physical touchpoints, with consistent access to information, services, and support.
- Cloud-Native, API-First Architectures: Build for agility and scalability. Cloud-native platforms and API-centric strategies enable rapid deployment of new features, integration with partners, and future-proofing against evolving needs.
- Operational Efficiency and Compliance: Automate manual processes, streamline workflows, and ensure regulatory compliance to free up staff for higher-value interactions and reduce costs.
Publicis Sapient’s work with U.S. grocers, pharmacy retailers, and hybrid health and wellness brands demonstrates the transformative power of digital. By modernizing legacy systems, creating seamless digital journeys, and enabling personalization and operational efficiency, we help organizations:
- Increase digital adoption and engagement
- Improve Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and customer satisfaction
- Reduce operational costs and manual workloads
- Accelerate innovation and speed to market
- Build trust and loyalty in a competitive landscape
The future of retail health and wellness is digital, connected, and customer-centric. Retailers who embrace this new frontier will not only grow their impact on customers’ lives but also secure their place as leaders in the evolving health and wellness ecosystem.
Ready to transform your retail health and wellness offerings? Let’s connect and put your customers at the center of a truly unified, omnichannel health journey.