Pharmacy App vs Aggregator: Who Wins on Choice?

Hi it's Wassim from Burger Index

On this week's BI Insights, we looked at how the customer experience differs when ordering from Innova Pharmacy directly through its app versus the same store on HungerStation.

For pharmacy, grocery and shops teams this raises some important questions:

• Does the same store offer the same assortment across channels?

• Are products priced differently on aggregators?

• How much choice is lost when customers order through a third party platform?

Customers often assume they are shopping the same pharmacy regardless of channel. In reality, the experience can differ significantly in terms of choice, pricing and promotions, even when the store is the same.

Let's see how Innova compares on its own app versus HungerStation.

Choice: the biggest difference is assortment

The same store offers different levels of choice depending on the channel.

This means customers ordering directly from Innova have access to a slightly different catalogue than customers ordering through HungerStation.

Assortment gaps: aggregation comes at a cost

Most of Innova's catalogue is not available in every location through HungerStation.

In Umm Al Hammam, Riyadh, the gap is not marginal. More than half of the available assortment disappears when moving from the retailer's own channel to the aggregator. And the retailer's own channel assortment doesn't fluctuate by location.

Affordability: HungerStation comes out cheaper

HungerStation offers lower average prices across most pharmacy categories.

Looking at category level pricing across beauty, skincare, supplements, baby care and healthcare products, HungerStation is generally more affordable than the Innova App.

This can be explained by assortment. The Innova App carries a significantly larger catalogue, including products that are not available on HungerStation, which can influence average category pricing.

The tradeoff is clear:

• Innova App wins on choice

• HungerStation wins on affordability

  

Promotions: consistency remains high

Matched products are promoted similarly across both channels.

Across a sample of 1,957 matched products, promotion coverage and discount levels remain relatively consistent between the Innova App and HungerStation.

This suggests the primary difference between channels is not promotional activity, but assortment availability.

What this means

For retailers, channel performance is not just about pricing and promotions.

The biggest difference between direct and aggregator channels is often what customers can actually buy.

Without location level data extraction, product matching and taxonomy it is difficult to understand how assortment, pricing and promotions differ across owned and third party channels.

Burger Index extracts data across web and app platforms, enriches it through attribute extraction and matching, and visualises it in a way teams can go from questions to decisions daily.

👉 Book a demo at www.burgerindex.com
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