The pharmaceutical retail market was subject of several changes along the last years and become more competitive and characterized by product and service offers looking like even more the same amongst several competitors. One of the alternatives for companies to develop differentiation competitive advantage at this market is to exploit an amplified service offer, with more quality, developing more perennial relationships with its customers. In this work the relationships between customer fidelity with the service level offered will be analyzed, as well the relationships between customer fidelity and the service level expected by customers. The data collection was conducted with 196 pharmacy/drugstore customers in Vitória-ES city in order to gather information about the service level expectation as well the perception about the service level offered by pharmacies. Indicators of the respondents fidelity as pharmacy customers were also collected. Considering the five dimensions of the SERVQUAL scale, a match was verified between service offered and expected by pharmacies only at the Assurance dimension. At the remaining dimensions the offered service was evaluated as lower than expected by customers. The results indicate that customers used to expect more than they get when Tangibles, Reliability, Responsiveness and Empathy dimensions were evaluated. After all, in order to increase customer's satisfaction, pharmacies at the city of Vitória-ES should pay attention and improve the service level offered in such dimensions where the dissonances were identified in order to become more competitive.
Fidelity; Pharmaceutical retail market; Service level; Relationship marketing
