Enquirer Consulting Group

Reachable Buyer Map

Prepared for Artur Marques · Aflofarm Portugal · August 2026
A consumer health portfolio in Portugal is sold twice. Once to the trade that decides whether it sits on the shelf, and once to the professional who decides whether it gets recommended off that shelf. Those are two different buyers, on two different calendars, and almost nothing that reaches one reaches the other. This map covers both sides: who signs in each, and roughly how many of them there are.
Community pharmacies
The whole retail market for this portfolio, and unusually countable: an almost fixed national network, tightly regulated, geographically distributed by rule rather than by demand. Ownership is fragmenting toward multi-site owners, which quietly moves the buying decision away from the counter it used to sit behind.
Who signs: the pharmacy owner, the technical director, and at multi-site owners the person who does the buying for all of the sites.
2,900 to 3,100
community pharmacies nationally, a near fixed network rather than a growing one
Buying groups and pharmacy banners
The layer that compresses the segment above into a small number of decisions. A group agreement can put a product in front of hundreds of counters at once, and being outside the groups means selling the same case several hundred times. The smallest and most concentrated group of names on this page.
Who signs: the central purchasing lead, the category manager, and the commercial director of the group.
A few dozen groups
between them covering a large share of the pharmacies above; individually nameable
Wholesalers and distribution cooperatives
Few in number, national in reach, and gatekeepers in the literal sense: distribution decides availability, and availability decides whether recommendation converts into a sale. A short list where every relationship is material.
Who signs: the category or product buyer, the commercial director, and the supply chain lead on listings.
Fewer than ten of national scale
plus regional operators; a list short enough that coverage is a matter of persistence, not reach
Parapharmacies and retail health aisles
Where the products that do not need a pharmacy find shelf space: health corners in food retail, drugstore chains, standalone parapharmacies. Different buyer, different margin conversation, and a segment that behaves like consumer retail rather than like healthcare.
Who signs: the chain category buyer, the store group commercial manager, and the owner at independent parapharmacies.
Roughly 900 to 1,300 points of sale
the least reliable count on this page, because no single register defines what counts as one
Primary care physicians
The professional layer that decides whether a product is mentioned at all in a consultation, especially for the categories where the patient would otherwise never ask. Reached by name and by unit rather than through the trade, and almost never by the same message that works on a buyer.
Who signs: the family physician, the coordinator of a family health unit, and the clinical director of a private clinic group.
8,000 to 10,000
specialists in family medicine nationally, working across several hundred primary care units
Relevant specialists and private clinic groups
Small by count, disproportionate in influence, because a specialist recommendation carries into primary care and into pharmacy conversation. Gynecology, gastroenterology and respiratory medicine each map to a different part of a consumer health portfolio and each is a separate audience.
Who signs: the specialist, the clinical director, the medical director of a private group, and the pharmacy lead in a private hospital.
3,000 to 4,500
specialists across those three fields, concentrated in roughly 100 to 150 private hospitals and clinics

Where the openings are

1
The counter and the consulting room are separate markets. Trade coverage gets the product stocked. Professional coverage gets it recommended. Most consumer health companies in a newer market build the first and postpone the second, because the second has no distributor to do it for them. It is the layer with no intermediary, which is exactly why it stays open.
2
A few dozen names cover most of the shelf. The buying group and wholesaler layer turns roughly three thousand pharmacies into a working list of maybe fifty people. That is not a field force problem, it is a named contact problem, and it is the cheapest coverage available in this market. Everything below it is repetition.
3
Portfolio breadth splits the audience, it does not widen it. Smoking cessation, digestive health, nasal care and women's health each land with a different professional and a different category buyer. Sent as one company message they compete with each other for attention. Sent as separate named audiences they compound, and building those audiences is mechanical work that runs continuously rather than campaign by campaign.
Built from public market data, counts banded deliberately. Pharmacy and physician figures come from national regulatory and professional records; the retail and buying group layers are described rather than precisely counted, because no public register defines their boundaries consistently. It describes the market rather than your business, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
ENQUIRER CONSULTING GROUP
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