Vad kostar en förlorad apotekskund - en estimering av bristkostnaden för receptbelagda läkemedel på ett konkurrensutsatt apotek i Sverige
After the deregulation of the Swedish pharmacy market customers can be lost due to stock-outs. Optimization of pharmacy inventory levels has thus become increasingly important. To minimize inventory costs while considering the cost of shortages the latter must be estimated. However, the shortage cost is very difficult to compute. Thus, the aim of this paper is to estimate the pharmacy-specific shortage cost parameter and its relation to other inventory costs. Our results indicate that 18 per cent of customers in out-of-stock situations are lost. With lost gross profit of 80 SEK per customer this generates a shortage cost of 3 440 SEK per week which corresponds to approximately 53 per cent of inventory holding costs.