Agglomeration economies and localization factors of the health sector in the post-covid city: the case of pharmacies in the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area, Mexico Vicente

Abstract

The main objective of pharmaceutical care is not to meet the needs of the population, but rather to offer services that increase sales. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that urban policies have allowed this sector to follow location strategies that benefit from agglomeration economies. The objective of this work was to identify, through the construction of raster geographic models and the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) technique, how the location factors of the main pharmacy chains change according to their target market in the Metropolitan Area of Guadalajara. Among the results, it was found that the location factors sought by the main pharmacy chains tend to use strategies related to agglomeration economies, locating near competitors, private health services or commercial areas with a high volume of people, but not in spaces with low socioeconomic levels.