Health and beauty giants and supermarkets will move towards providing a one-stop healthcare service, offering consumers pharmacy, dental and GP services under one roof, according to retail analyst Planet Retail.

Moves by Boots and Sainsbury's to expand their healthcare offers beyond pharmacy were a sign of things to come, said Planet Retail senior retail analyst Stephen Springham.

Mr Springham believes that large multiple branches and supermarkets will start expanding into other areas of healthcare in the near future, to capitalise on footfall and offer convenience to consumers.

"Boots is a trusted brand and it can be leveraged into all these other concepts, so it does make sense for them to go into hearing aids, doctors' surgeries or dentistry – anything healthcare related" Stephen Springham Planet Retail

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The comments followed Alliance Boots' acquisition last week of a 49 per cent stake in David Omerod Hearing Centre, which runs 340 of its in-store hearing clinics – a move that made sense for Boots, Mr Springham said. "Boots is a trusted brand and it can be leveraged into all these other concepts, so it does make sense for them to go into hearing aids, doctors' surgeries or dentistry – anything healthcare related, provided that they've got the space in store to do it," he told C+D.

"I would expect [Boots] to go down that route but the big caveat is they've got to have the space to do it [in their branches], so we're only really talking about the big city-centre stores," Mr Springham added.

And he said supermarkets were likely to follow Sainsbury's lead into offering more healthcare outside of pharmacy, after it set out plans to open more in-store GP surgeries.

"I can certainly see the major grocers going into that arena," Mr Springham said. "They've got high footfall coming through their stores and the chance to do everything under one roof works for consumers and retailers, so I think we're going to see much more of this."