DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/6a9dbc/mail_order_and_int) has announced the addition of the "Mail Order and Internet Pharmacy in Europe: Embracing the New Challenge" report to their offering.
Mail Order and Internet Pharmacy in a 17 European Country Study plus the USA
This is the first strategic report describing the unfolding growth of mail order and Internet pharmacies in Europe's main markets. It explores the benefits and risks to the public and the challenges and opportunities they present to the pharmaceutical supply chain. It is researched and written by leading healthcare strategic marketing consultant.
Mail Order and Internet Pharmacies bind the concept of discount home shopping into virtual healthcare communities through the technology of the World Wide Web. Yet their very existence has exposed the regulatory differences between States in Europe and split opinion among politicians, healthcare professionals and pharmacy retailers as to the benefits and risks presented to consumers and patients and the economic threats and opportunities to the healthcare supply chain.
This is the first report to explore the mail order and Internet pharmacy phenomenon across Europes main markets
Mail Order and Internet Pharmacy in Europe is an up-to-date and comprehensive study that:
- Shows how mail order and Internet pharmacies are evolving in different forms to provide consumer and patient access to medical advice, health information, medicines and associated products.
- Identifies the success factors that have enabled mail order and Internet pharmacies to thrive in some European States whilst making little progress in others
- Outlines the benefits and risks to healthcare consumers looking for: self-medication; discreet medical consultation and prescriptions to treat embarrassing conditions and lifestyle drugs as well as patients needing prescription medicines for chronic ailments
- Explains why the major European pharmaceutical distributors and pharmacy chains are investing in distance marketing channels
- Shows that nearly a quarter of pharmacy turnover in the USA is through online channels and compares the factors influencing the American model to those evolving in Europes main markets.
- Analyses the business opportunities and compares these to the economic threats that mail order and Internet pharmacies introduce to the healthcare supply chain in Europe
- Explores the main drivers of mail order and Internet pharmacies in Europe and shows the regulatory hurdles they have had to defeat on a State by State basis
- Draws conclusions to describe new scenarios for the future and shows how healthcare manufacturers can exploit the strengths of mail order and Internet pharmacies to reach specific consumer segments and patient groups.
Mail Order and Internet Pharmacy in Europe Embracing the New Challenge
Covers 17 European States plus a chapter describing the progress of online pharmacy in the USA includes: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom
Executive Summary
The mail order and Internet pharmacy concept in Europe has been on a long journey since the mid 1990s when the concept first began to appear. Today, it is breaking through as a new and challenging retail channel especially in Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands, parts of the Nordic Region and Poland. This is the result of entrepreneurial drive and legal decisions by the European Court of Justice forcing the national regulatory agendas of European States
The mail order and Internet pharmacy channel in Europe should not be underestimated. For example around a third of consumer purchases of the weight reducing brand Alli (GSK) in 2009 in Germany were purchased through mail order and Internet pharmacy.
The question now for healthcare manufacturers is whether to resist the development of mail order and Internet channels in order to preserve prices and maintain the confidence of their traditional pharmacy customers or to identify areas of opportunity to reach specific target audiences that prefer the privacy, convenience and low prices gained by buying their medicines online.
When we add together the different Internet services we end up with a virtual healthcare community which not only provides legal access to prescription and non-prescription medicines and other associated products but includes online medical consultants where patients can get advice and obtain prescriptions for drugs for embarrassing conditions, contraception and lifestyle as well as other personal concerns such as STD
- James W Dudley author of the report
Some of the Questions this first report into Mail Order and Internet Pharmacies seeks to answer
- Do mail order and Internet pharmacies offering high discounts on pharmaceutical products present an economic threat to the European healthcare supply chain or a retail channel that the meets the needs of specific consumer segments and special interest patient groups?
- Is there an opportunity for healthcare manufacturers and associated suppliers to design products and services that exploit Internet technology and the privacy and convenience that online driven channels offer as a competitive advantage?
- Is the entry of the major distributors, Celesio, Alliance Boots and Phoenix into the sector an indication of the longer term, strategic importance of mail order and Internet pharmacy in Europe?
- Are patients attracted to online clinics legitimately writing prescriptions for impotence, intimate infections and pain, incontinence, male pattern baldness, smoking cessation and lifestyle drugs and delivering these at discount prices to patients homes via Internet pharmacies as well as providing contraception advice and diagnostics for STDs including HIV?
- Within the bounds of patient safety and good ethical practice should manufacturers explore how to link their brands to the services provided by authorised online medical consultants and clinics?
- Has the contradiction in the attitudes of regulators attempting to ban or restrict direct delivery marketing of pharmaceutical products led to the massive growth of unregulated, illegal and fraudulent organisations which use the Internet to access customers?
- What lessons can pharmaceutical companies learn from the rapid growth of mail order and Internet pharmacies in the USA and Germany are the success models transferable?
Key Topics Covered:
Chapter 1 - Introduction - Mail order and Internet Pharmacies in Europe
Chapter 2 - The Development of Mail Order and Internet Pharmacy in the USA
Chapter 3 - Mail Order and Internet Pharmacy Development
Chapter 4 - Mail order and Internet Pharmacy Development in Switzerland
Chapter 5 - Mail Order and Internet Pharmacies in the UK
Chapter 6 - Mail Order and Internet Pharmacies in the Netherlands and Belgium
Chapter 7 - Mail Order and Internet Pharmacies in the Nordic Region
Chapter 8 - Mail Order and Internet Pharmacies in Central European States
Chapter 9 - Mail Order and Internet Pharmacies in Other European States
Chapter 10 - Conclusions of the Study
For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/6a9dbc/mail_order_and_int