Do I have to match Amazon or Promofarma prices?

No. Match them, or get close, only on the short list of products your customers compare from memory or with a phone in hand. Everywhere else in parapharmacy you compete on advice, immediate availability and a margin that keeps the pharmacy open.

What is a key value item (KVI)?

An item that shapes the whole store's price image far more than its sales would suggest: customers know it, buy it often and roughly know what it costs. In a pharmacy these are typically a well-known sunscreen, a mass-market shower gel or shampoo, or a supplement people ask for by name.

Can I sell a product below what it cost me?

Selling at a loss is not simply banned, but Spain's Law 7/1996 makes it unlawful when it is unfair, for example when it misleads customers about the price level of other products or is part of a strategy to push competitors out. If you plan to do it systematically, ask a legal adviser.

What 'before' price can I show when I advertise a discount?

The lowest price you applied in the previous 30 days. You must be able to prove it from the price history in your pharmacy management software.

How often should I review parapharmacy prices?

Key value items every few weeks, and always before a big campaign such as summer or back to school. For the rest of the shelf, quarterly is enough unless a manufacturer changes its price list.

How to Price Parapharmacy Against Online Sellers

First, which part of the shelf do customers really compare?

Nearly all comparison with the internet happens on a small slice of the range. Retail literature calls these key value items (KVIs): items that, in the words of US pricing firm Engage3, "disproportionally drive the price value perception". Engage3 says about a third of a store's price perception typically comes from only 2.5% of its products, and presents this as a general retail pattern across grocery, drug and mass merchandise. Nobody has measured it for Spanish pharmacies, so treat it as an order of magnitude, not a rule.

In a parapharmacy the list usually writes itself if you ask whoever works the counter. The products most often heard in sentences like "online I can get it for..." are:

Well-known sunscreen brands, especially the 200 ml size.
A mass-market shower gel, shampoo or cream that people buy by name.
Supplements requested by brand (magnesium, melatonin, collagen).
Heavily repeated baby brands: wipes, nappy creams, formula milks.

No book dictates that list; your neighbourhood does. In a tourist area it changes in summer, in a rural pharmacy it barely moves. Pull the 50 parapharmacy items with the most units sold from your management software and mark those a customer can find identically online. Those are your candidates.

The online picture, with the data that actually exists

Market-share figures for Amazon or Promofarma in Spanish parapharmacy are not public; do not trust anyone who quotes them without a source. Partial figures do exist. LUDA Partners' III Online Parapharmacy Sales Report 2025 (in Spanish) reports, among other things, that the average basket on marketplaces and the manufacturer channel exceeds 20 euros, that 79% of users expect to keep mixing online and in-store purchases, and that 13% ask for advice in person and then buy online, six points up on the year before.

That last figure matters for pricing. If one customer in eight uses your counter as a consultation and buys elsewhere, the answer is not to cut everything. It is to charge for advice through your margin on products where you add something, and to be competitive on those that need no explanation.

The internet is not the only rival, either. In IQVIA's December 2025 market trends report (in Spanish; moving annual total at retail prices), consumer health sold through pharmacies rose from 7,425 to 7,698 million euros, up 3.7%. Standalone parapharmacy shops grew much faster, from 638 to 703 million, and online parapharmacy from 77 to 89 million. The upshot: pharmacies slipped from 87.1% to 86.1% of that market. They still dominate the category, but each year they cede a little to channels that compete mainly on price.

A three-layer policy

The simplest way to organise prices is to split the shelf into three layers and give each its own rule.

Layer	What it includes	Price rule	Review
Reference	15-40 products customers compare	Close to the best reasonable online price; low margin accepted	Every 2-4 weeks
Advice	Dermocosmetics and ranges where the pharmacist recommends	List price or manufacturer promotion; do not chase online	Per campaign
Long tail	All other items, hard-to-compare formats	Standard target margin for the category	Quarterly

The 15-40 range does not come from a study; it is a workable range that one person can review by hand. If your list reaches 200, you no longer have a reference policy, just blanket discounts.

How to split margin

There is no universal percentage here, and be wary of anyone who offers one. An ASPIME report published in El Farmacéutico (in Spanish), based on 2021 tax returns, puts the overall gross margin of a pharmacy between 28% and 32% depending on turnover band, but those figures blend reimbursed medicines with parapharmacy and cannot set a category. What works is your own data: your management software gives you purchase price, retail price and units by family.

An example with invented numbers, only to show the mechanics. Suppose 30 reference products make up 20% of parapharmacy sales at an 18% margin, and everything else makes up 80% at a 38% margin. The average margin is 0.2 × 18 + 0.8 × 38 = 34%. Cut the reference products five more points and the average drops one point. Raise them five and you gain one point, but you lose the reason customers compare you favourably. Running the sum on your real data beats any rule.

Two precautions:

Do not take reference margins to zero; the customer who comes in for sunscreen and leaves with shampoo and a face cream is the one who pays for the discount.
Look at margin in euros, not only in percent. 15% of a 25-euro product is worth more than 30% of a 4-euro one.

What the law says, and what it does not

Selling below cost

Article 14 of Law 7/1996 on Retail Trade (in Spanish) says sales to the public at a loss may not be made when they are deemed unfair. It defines a sale at a loss as one below the purchase price on the invoice, net of the proportional share of any discounts shown on it. It treats as unfair, among other cases, a sale that may mislead about the price level of other products or that forms part of a strategy to eliminate competitors.

In practice, selling one loss-leader at cost for a few days is not a problem in itself, but a systematic below-cost policy can be. If you are going to touch that limit, have a legal adviser review it.

The 30-day rule on promotions

When you advertise a price reduction, the previous price you show must be the lowest applied in the prior 30 days, under Article 6a of Directive 98/6/EC, applicable since May 2022; the Spanish public information service Consumo responde puts it in exactly those terms. The guide to pharmacy pricing and advertising rules covers the full framework.

What changes for your pricing: raising a price for a week so you can "cut" it afterwards no longer works. If a reference product was cheaper 20 days ago, the discount is calculated from that lower price. With prices that move often, you need a reliable history. How this shows up on an electronic shelf label is explained on the page about electronic shelf labels for parapharmacy.

This rule does not affect reimbursed medicines, whose retail price is set by the authorities.

A working method for a Monday

Export the 50 parapharmacy items with the most units over the last 12 months.
Mark those a customer can compare online against an identical listing (same brand, same size).
Check the online price of those products at two or three shops and note the date. You do not need to chase the absolute minimum: the price including delivery and lead time is usually different from the headline price.
Decide product by product whether to match, get close, or hold the price and lean on advice.
Record the change and the date. That history is your defence if someone challenges an offer.
Look again in a month.

If you do this by hand with paper signs and changes in the management software, mismatches between shelf and till show up quickly; there is an article on till errors and where they come from. The electronic shelf label guide for pharmacies explains when automating it pays off, and the page on the independent pharmacy's parapharmacy places these decisions in the context of the whole business.

Common mistakes

Cutting everything a little. It shrinks margin across the shelf and customers notice nothing. Better to cut deeply on a few products.
Matching a price without checking the size. A 200 ml pack is not a 250 ml pack even if the brand is the same.
Forgetting the end of a promotion. A sign left up two more weeks is a price you do not charge at the till.
Confusing a best-seller with a key value item. What sells most is not always what gets compared most.
Not documenting the previous price. It is the first thing you will be asked for in a complaint.

What to validate before applying this

This article is a guide to judgement, not legal advice or an audit of your pharmacy. Margin figures should come from your own management software, and the reading of selling at a loss and of the 30-day rule should be confirmed by a legal adviser or your professional pharmacists' association before you base a campaign on them.

How to Price Parapharmacy Without Starting a War With Online Sellers.