Online sales crowd out drug sales via traditional pharmacy chains in the USA.
Sales on the U.S. pharmaceutical retail market are stagnating. In early August, Walgreens, the largest U.S. drugstore chain, announced plans to close 200 stores. And drugstore chain CVS will slow the pace of its annual store expansion by reducing the plan for opening new stores by 6 times.
These announcements of the representatives of the pharmaceutical retail market are caused by the growth of online sales of medicines. Online sales crowd out the traditional pharmacy retailers not only in the USA but all over the globe.
Evaluating the perspective of work in 2019 Walgreens expects the net profit decrease at the rate of about 7%.
Online sales of OTC drugs that can be normally bought in regular non-specialized retail drug stores are quickly crowd pharmacies out of the market. The attack on traditional pharmacies was considerably accelerated by the acquisition of the virtual pharmacy chain PillPack by online sales leader Amazon. The leader has paid $ 750 million for its new acquisition. It is now easier to buy medicines in view of already tested by Amazon delivery schemes.
The U.S. pharmacies are trying to compensate for the drop in sales by providing additional services. It is not by accident that many pharmacies in the USA sell coffee and consumer products. It’s obvious that the pharmacies have approached the point that they have to trade in some other goods and services like it does any petrol station.
The situation in the countries of the former Soviet Union is somewhat different. For example, in Ukraine following the results of the third quarter of 2019, pharmacy sales have demonstrated growth of 18.5% in UAH terms and amounted to approximately 25.6 billion UAH. The sales increase in package terms amounted to 1.7%; in dollar terms, the market grew by 18.2% as compared to the same period of last year.