Available medication and business benefits: an empathy strategy into risky but meaningful 24h pharmacy

Purpose This paper aims to improve input-output utility and business benefits (consumer satisfaction and purchases) of 24h pharmacies, avoiding them quitting this humanistic project due to higher costs and unstable returns. Design/methodology/approach In this light, this paper takes online reviews on multiple e-retail pharmacies from May 20, 2021, to March 12, 2024, as research data and explores the insights and configurational effects of pharmacy empathy under different types of drugs, time periods and cities with the method combining texts mining and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. Findings The results show that 24h e-pharmacy empathy includes responsiveness, perseverance, attitudes and convenience. The combination of them can enhance consumer satisfaction and purchases in configurational ways (four satisfaction configurations and three purchase configurations). The interaction of purchase time and drug types with service responsiveness and perseverance can be a “panacea” to awaken consumers' gratitude or forgiveness. Besides, spatial heterogeneity indicates that empathy strategy benefits metropolises more in satisfaction and earns more customer loyalty based on emergency medication in ordinary cities. Originality/value This paper provides an optimistic trajectory and empirical evidence for 24 pharmacies to continue this meaningful but risky business in spatio-temporal context by employing an empathy strategy. Meanwhile, it offers the feasibility of a mixed method integrating textual insights and configurations for service research.