In the case of high cost and sluggish sales growth, more and more pharmacies will use non-drug sales as a way to improve performance. For online pharmaceutical e-commerce, non-drug sales are the mainstream, because the demand for long-distance drug purchases is very unclear in the intensive market of offline drugstores. As a result, non-pharmaceutical products are becoming more and more important as a supplement to the market. However, the challenges of non-drug sales are great, especially for offline pharmacies, and it's hard to say that access to non-pharmaceutical businesses can be successful.
There are three obstacles to the entry of offline pharmacies into non-drug sales: first, the regional policy restrictions are very clear. Because China has a lot of pharmacy management non-standard problems for a long time, especially the health care of stolen brush medicare card problems of drugstore that decide a dot, many local governments strictly limit the pharmacy drug sales. Beijing, for example, rules, the medical insurance fixed-point pharmacy drug sales business area of no more than 30% of the whole area, and pharmacies to regional segmentation, cannot appear medicines and medicines of confusion. Many cities also stipulate that pharmacists are not allowed to use non-pharmaceuticals as a drug, and even some provinces have banned over-the-counter sales of non-pharmaceutical products, such as milk powder.
In contrast with foreign countries, it is necessary to say that many policies are unnecessary. However, these policies are also triggered by the lack of regulations on drug stores, and if the pharmacy does not steal health CARDS, it will not raise the issue of access to policy. But it also reflects a lack of refined ability to regulate health care. If health insurance is better for drug store monitoring, it can be effectively managed without administrative measures.
Second, the advantages of non-drug sales are not obvious. For users, the main function of Chinese pharmacies is to sell medicine, rather than to purchase daily necessities, and it is not easy to reverse the brand image of the pharmacy itself. This is very different from the location of drug and supermarket in American pharmacies. Moreover, the gross profit of most daily necessities is not high, and it is difficult to achieve supermarket shipments and it is easy to lose money. Therefore, most pharmacies just use daily necessities as hot style to attract users to the door, thus increasing the number of stores and improving the possible sales. Non-pharmaceutical sales are mainly targeted at daily care such as high Maori medical devices, health care products and similar cosmetic products.
In terms of category, medical equipment is the most advantageous part of pharmacy, because it is closer to medicine. And health care products and medicine makeup is the advantage of traditional retail channels and their positive competition is not easy to reverse the brand image and may be an effective means to increase product added value. Whether it was wanning or watsons, it began as a pharmacy and eventually turned into a convenience store for personal health products. Of course, it's a bit far away from the drugstore, which is unlikely to abandon the drug industry altogether, nor will it be allowed to do so.
In order to increase the value of non-pharmaceutical products, it is mainly reflected in the service. The advantage of pharmacy is to pay attention to the health of the individual. Users will be more receptive if more professional pharmacists are available to recommend products such as health products and similar cosmetics. Of course, the premise is that the product should be suitable for different individuals, which is also the value of service. For small medical devices for home use, if it is simply marketed, it can still be a price comparison or an exclusive channel compared to the drugstore's peers. Therefore, tying the device to the service will be a suitable model, especially if the purchase of the equipment to give a certain time of service will greatly increase the user's stickiness.
In practice, however, Chinese pharmacies have only just begun to improve their service capacity, and they need to further observe their actual development. It is not always possible to develop rapidly with a large number of products to promote non-drug sales.
Finally, the advantages of non-pharmaceutical sales channel are not obvious. It shows that the number of pharmacies in the country is very high, to 450,000, in some cities, even more than supermarkets. However, the chain rate of drugstores is still low, especially in a single city, where more than 100 stores can be big chains. But the number of drugstores is relatively small compared to chain stores, such as the family's more than 1,000 stores in Shanghai. In many products, especially fast consumer goods, the pharmacy's channel advantage is weaker, the core reason is mainly the concentration degree of the pharmacy is weak, there is no strong ground coverage advantage. Even in the field of pharmacy and health products, because of the lack of channels, it has been unable to be the main channel for many products, and also restricted the sales of non-pharmaceutical products.
For medical electrical contractor, due to China's offline pharmacy is too dense, difficult to form a clear demand, online sales of the drug become the main revenue source of medical electric business, the traditional electric business enterprise has great advantage, backwardness of enterprise hard on the sales of the drug and its rival, is also difficult to gain advantages in the field of current medical electrical contractor.
In general, it is difficult to be the primary means of boosting the performance of pharmacies at the present stage, which can only be a supportive method. Unless the drugstore is transformed into a watsons supermarket, the pharmacy still needs to spend more time on drug sales if it is to insist on its own business. And pharmaceutical e-commerce is not a big market. Even in the future, it will be difficult to develop the current model. If it only supports sales of non-pharmaceuticals, it can only be classified as traditional e-commerce.
|
