HealthPlus Retail Group — Sales, Marketing & Customer Strategy
The brand and positioning, customer-acquisition and loyalty strategy, the omnichannel and pricing approach, and the marketing plan driving footfall.
Section 7 · Business Plan
Sales, Marketing & Customer Strategy
The brand and positioning, customer-acquisition and loyalty strategy, the omnichannel and pricing approach, and the marketing plan driving footfall.
7.1 Customer Proposition
HealthPlus competes on a clearly differentiated proposition: lower
out-of-pocket cost on chronic and acute medication, a meaningfully
broader assortment of health, beauty and wellness, and a
digitally-native loyalty experience that rewards household-level spend
rather than individual transactions. The brand promise — “Better Health,
Better Value, Every Day” — is operationalised across pricing, range,
service and digital touchpoints.
household second, and the beauty/wellness shopper third — in that
economic order, but in a single integrated visit.
7.2 Customer Segmentation & Target Markets
Our addressable customer base is segmented into five priority
cohorts. Each is sized using StatsSA, Council for Medical Schemes and
Eighty20 data, and each is mapped to specific store formats, range mix,
and marketing investment.
| Segment | Size (M adults) | Avg. Annual Spend (ZAR) | Primary Format | Strategic Priority |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chronic medication patients | 4.6 | R 9,200 | Metro / Tier-2 | Anchor — recurring scripts |
| Medical scheme members | 9.1 | R 6,400 | Metro | High-margin retail attach |
| Township/peri-urban households | 14.8 | R 2,100 | Express / Township | Volume — affordable basics |
| Beauty & wellness shoppers | 7.2 | R 4,300 | Metro | Margin — discretionary mix |
| Cash-pay primary care users | 11.4 | R 1,800 | Express / Clinic | Acquisition — first script |
Table 7.1 — Customer segments and economic positioning
7.3 PlusOne Loyalty Programme
PlusOne is the strategic centrepiece of customer engagement. Built on
a household-account model rather than a per-individual card, it is
designed to capture the full wallet of a family across chronic, acute,
baby, beauty and household categories — and to surface predictive
cross-category recommendations through the mobile app.
7.3.1 Programme Mechanics
7.4 Pricing Architecture
Pricing is engineered to deliver a defensible “everyday value”
perception while protecting gross margin through category mix and
private label penetration. Three pricing zones are maintained
dynamically:
| Zone | Categories | Position vs. Clicks/Dis-Chem | Gross Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| KVI (Known-Value Items) | Top 400 SKUs — chronic, baby, basics | 6–10% below | 14–22% |
| Mid-tier | Beauty, vitamins, OTC, wellness | 2–4% below | 32–38% |
| Private label | HealthPlus, Vita+, Lumière, Care+ | N/A — exclusive | 42–54% |
| Premium / Prestige | International beauty, niche health | Match | 28–34% |
Table 7.2 — Four-zone pricing architecture
7.5 Marketing & Brand Strategy
Marketing investment is structured to build national brand awareness
rapidly while preserving unit economics. Performance marketing dominates
the Y1–Y2 mix (driving app downloads, script transfers and store
openings); brand marketing scales from Y3 onwards to entrench the
price-leader narrative.
| Channel | Y1 Spend (ZAR M) | Y3 Spend (ZAR M) | Y5 Spend (ZAR M) | Primary KPI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Digital performance (Meta, Google, TikTok) | 14 | 52 | 92 | CAC, app installs |
| Retail TV & radio | 6 | 38 | 78 | Aided awareness |
| Out-of-home (taxi ranks, malls) | 4 | 22 | 46 | Store footfall |
| CRM & app push | 2 | 12 | 24 | Repeat rate |
| Sponsorship & community | 3 | 14 | 28 | Brand affinity |
| Trade marketing & in-store | 5 | 24 | 52 | Basket size |
| Total marketing investment | 34 | 162 | 320 | ~3.5% of revenue |
Table 7.3 — Marketing investment plan (FY1–FY5)
7.6 Digital & E-commerce
A unified commerce platform serves the website, mobile app,
click-and-collect, and last-mile delivery in 28 metropolitan zones
(launching Y2). The platform is purpose-built around the script-refill
journey — the highest-frequency, highest-LTV use case — with beauty and
wellness layered on top.
7.6.1 E-commerce Targets
| Metric | Y1 | Y2 | Y3 | Y4 | Y5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| App downloads (M) | 0.4 | 1.6 | 4.2 | 7.8 | 11.5 |
| Monthly active users (M) | 0.1 | 0.6 | 2.0 | 4.1 | 6.7 |
| Online revenue (ZAR M) | 6 | 52 | 186 | 492 | 1,012 |
| Online % of total | 1.8% | 4.9% | 7.4% | 9.5% | 11.0% |
| Click-and-collect orders/day | 120 | 680 | 2,400 | 5,800 | 11,200 |
Table 7.4 — Digital channel scaling targets
7.7 Customer Acquisition Economics
Customer acquisition cost (CAC), payback period and lifetime value
(LTV) are tracked at cohort level. Conservative base-case assumptions
are summarised below; these have been pressure-tested against benchmarks
from Clicks ClubCard (~21M members) and international comparables
(Walgreens myWalgreens, Boots Advantage Card).
cohort
Acquisition cost (CAC): R 84 • Annual gross profit per member: R
1,820 • 3-year LTV: R 4,950 • LTV : CAC ratio: 59x • Payback period: 1.7
months. These ratios sit comfortably within best-in-class retail loyalty
benchmarks (target ≥ 3x; world-class ≥ 10x) and provide substantial
margin of safety against marketing inflation.
7.8 Customer Service & Clinical Engagement
Beyond transactional retail, HealthPlus invests in clinical
relationships that drive retention and basket expansion. In-store nurse
clinics (rolled out across 60% of metro stores by Y3) offer
chronic-disease screening, vaccinations, and minor-ailment treatment,
turning each store into a primary-healthcare access point and creating a
clinical moat that is structurally difficult for non-pharmacy retailers
to replicate.
The clinical layer is not a cost centre — it is the moat. Each
clinical interaction lifts visit frequency by ~40% and average basket by
~28%, while creating a regulatory and trust barrier that pure-play
retail cannot easily cross. This is the single most defensible element
of the HealthPlus model.
Confidential — this business plan is provided to prospective investors and lenders for evaluation purposes only and may not be reproduced or distributed without the written consent of HealthPlus Retail Group (Pty) Ltd.