Online pharmacies only two formal operations

Abstract: The state Food and Drug Administration intends to allow online pharmacies to sell prescription drugs by prescription, the second online retail drug Third-party platform pilot Enterprises approved recently, online pharmacies ushered in a series of good news. At the same time, more and more investors are looking at online pharmacies

The state Food and Drug Administration intends to allow online pharmacies to sell prescription drugs by prescription, and the second online retail drug third party platform pilot Enterprise was awarded ... Recently, online pharmacies have ushered in a series of good news. At the same time, a growing number of investors are looking at online pharmacies trying to carve up a slice of China's drug-shopping market. However, the actual operation of the number of online pharmacies, but also let many people in the industry into confusion: the internet to sell drugs just look beautiful?

Normal operation online pharmacies less than 20%

According to the existing laws and regulations, access to the "Internet Drug transaction Qualification Certificate" C Certificate of the entity chain pharmacies, can build their own website for consumers to carry out drug retail business. The State administration of Food and Drug Administration official website shows that up to now, access to the Internet Drug trading Service Certificate "C Certificate of online pharmacies up to 225."

However, because of the technology and operating costs of the site is too high, access to C-card chain pharmacies actually carry out the internet sales of pharmaceutical business very few. According to insiders, the current operation of the relatively good, regular online pharmacies only about 40. This figure is less than 20% of the total number of online pharmacies approved.

On the surface, shop construction and operating costs are far lower than the physical stores, the cost of light to save the rent is very considerable. In this respect, insiders say it is not. "Self-built platform needs to invest a lot of human and material resources for website construction and website operation, not only to spend millions of to build the site, but also need six months to a year to polish the site, the site is well built after a large number of promotional costs, otherwise there will be no sales." "A drug dealer told the southern Daily News reporter.

According to the introduction, E-commerce hardware, technology and personnel are online pharmacies are an important part of the cost is not small. Site maintenance requires a large capacity, stable database, but also with the major banks or Third-party payment centers have good cooperation, signed online payment service contract. In addition, Consumer data storage classification analysis, also requires strong background processing.

According to the Guangdong Jinkang Pharmacy Chain Co., Ltd. Manager Zheng Haotao in the media interview, "if the turnover of a day is less than thirty thousand or forty thousand Yuan, the general online pharmacy is very difficult to survive, and most of them are not up to this standard." ”

There are medical and electrical business people Frankly, the Internet is the industry to burn money, the construction of pharmaceutical e-commerce, especially the platform, the first year of basic investment needs about 3.8 million. Investment in basic costs, but also in operating costs. Internet network of a dime, how to let consumers know? How to enable consumers to facilitate and quickly realize online transactions? These problems for every online pharmacy, not only need not at all costs to promote the network, offline promotion, but also need faith, need to adhere to.

Multiple factors restricting the development of online pharmacy

In recent years, the rapid development of pharmaceutical dealers, the 2010 online pharmacy sales have not been billion, 2012 online pharmacy sales have exceeded 1.6 billion, 2013, the total sales of pharmaceutical dealers over 4 billion. Compared with the size of 255.8 billion of the pharmaceutical retail market, the online retailing of pharmaceuticals is still small and the development space is huge.

However, online pharmacies face a lot of difficulties. A media article pointed out that the online pharmacy an unavoidable problem is that low-cost marketing of the online shopping model, is bound to disrupt the existing drug price system. From the current day Cat Medicine Museum and the Beijing-East good pharmacist flagship store, it joined the online pharmacy for the big sales, often launched such as "buy", "second Kill" and other price killer. and endless "bucket price" phenomenon, to stimulate online pharmacies into a kind of abnormal competition.

Some electrical business observers have written that the environment of China's online pharmacies is very bad, the hospital occupies about 74% of the drug sales, especially prescription drugs, this part of the market will not be the Internet pharmacies scramble, the real market space is only pharmacies retail OTC part, probably only 50 billion or 60 billion of the size, As health care is not open to online pharmacies, this size also has to be discounted, while OTC drugs have the characteristics of low unit price and gross margin, online pharmacies in logistics and pharmacist services to spend more cost, in fact, is not suitable for e-commerce business.

How to achieve profitability is a major problem for online pharmacies. Limited by the Internet to buy drugs, consumption scale difficult to cross the balance point of profit. The reality that Medicare cards cannot be used to buy drugs online and that prescription drugs cannot be bought online has limited consumer behavior. It is understood that even in the consumer, regulatory, logistics and other more mature in the United States market, online pharmacies are not easy to profit.

On the other hand, online black pharmacies are exposed frequently, and also affect the reputation of the regular online pharmacy. According to incomplete statistics, in the past two years, more than 200 online black pharmacies have been exposed, but this number for the existing online black pharmacies is just drop. Some black pharmacies, even if they have been exposed, will continue to sell in a different domain. This is not only a serious threat to the interests of consumers, for the medical and electronic business, also became unspeakable pain.

In search engines, reporters to "online pharmacies" as the key words can be thousands related information, including a variety of online pharmacies are dazzling. and formal access to the "two cards" of the online pharmacy information, is a lot of "false information" impact of sporadic, and even the black drugstore smear.

A number of regular pharmaceutical dealers said that because the network is not standardized, consumers in the Internet is difficult to find a formal online pharmacy, which requires the relevant authorities from the market perspective of regulation planning, while increasing the crackdown. "These online black pharmacy crime cost is too low, they shot a gun to change a place." Although online sales of medicine is the trend of the industry, but the practice of these black pharmacies completely disrupted the market, the Internet to buy medicine market is they such a bad, regular pharmaceutical dealers can now only burn money to make a yell. ”

In addition, licensed pharmacists have been one of the most important factors affecting the development of pharmaceutical retailing, even restricting the opening of enterprises. Not only is the physical retail pharmacy, the battle for talent has spread to the pharmaceutical electricity business. Before long, "Internet food and drug management measures (draft)", so that online pharmacies for licensed pharmacists this scarce resource competition more intense, human cost greatly increased.