Boston Consulting: medical e-commerce still has four pain points

Source: caixin.com.2016-04-12 pharmaceutical e-commerce blowout development Recently, Boston Consulting Company (BCG) released the latest report "medical e-commerce is in the ascendant, six trends of future development" According to the report, product quality assurance, medication guidance, medical insurance docking and prescription source become the main consumer pain points to be solved in the future development of pharmaceutical e-commerce BCG believes that there are six development trends of Chinese pharmaceutical e-commerce in the future Trend 1: the development of medical e-commerce is a major good for the medical industry, and has a huge role in promoting, which will bring about the role transformation of various enterprises in the industrial chain Trend 2: prescription drugs and over-the-counter drugs will form a completely different e-commerce business model To win in the future requires differentiated competitive elements Trend 3: consumer oriented e-commerce of over-the-counter drugs and health care products has a greater subversive impact on traditional offline retail, while in the future, e-commerce of prescription drugs needs closer cooperation between Internet enterprises and relevant parties of traditional medicine industry Trend 4: in the future, the concentration of pharmaceutical e-commerce will be higher, and the enterprises that successfully run through all links of the value chain and create online and offline closed-loop can quickly rise and establish a leading position Trend 5: the development of medical e-commerce will take full service for patients as the core, greatly promoting the upgrading of medical service mode Trend 6: pharmaceutical e-commerce can help improve the transparency and efficiency of the industry, which will be more conducive to policy supervision Xia Xiaoyan, partner and managing director of Boston Consulting Company, said that the key to the real need to open the closed-loop of medical e-commerce lies in the opening of "medicine" and "medicine" At present, circulation enterprises and Internet giants that have realized layout and actively seek cross-border cooperation have the opportunity to establish a leading position in the integration of medical e-commerce in the future Huang Peijie, chairman of Greater China, senior partner and managing director of Boston Consulting Company, believes that drugstores will surely develop rapidly, but its speed depends on the government's regulatory policy on the separation of pharmaceuticals "But if the government comes to promote the separation of medicine and export the prescriptions, the industry will change very quickly." The report points out that the driving factors for the rapid development of pharmaceutical e-commerce come from three aspects: first, the policy regulatory environment will become increasingly favorable, including gradually relaxing the scale of online drug sales license approval, encouraging remote diagnosis and treatment pilot to provide the basis for future prescription drug e-commerce, and implementing multi-point practice of doctors Secondly, a variety of pharmaceutical e-commerce modes emerge in the market, including B2B based on dealer purchase platform, B2C based on platform and vertical self-supporting mode, o2o for pharmaceutical retail enterprises to provide value-added services for patients, and a variety of other prescription drug modes under exploration, which are actively promoting the development of the entire pharmaceutical e-commerce industry The final key is to open the policy of online sales of prescription drugs, which may lead to explosive growth in the future The key to online sales of prescription drugs lies in the outflow of prescriptions According to Xia Xiaoyan's analysis, it is relatively easy for virtual hospitals to dispense prescriptions, but the amount is very small There are two ways for offline entity hospitals to export prescriptions, one is to negotiate with hospitals alone, and the other is to involve local governments "For example, Jingdong and Xinhua medicine in Zibo are dominated by the government, which will involve whether the hospital has the initiative to do it." Among the outflow prescriptions, one is the high price drugs at one's own expense, the other is the mode of common diseases, chronic diseases or continuation prescriptions "It doesn't take up its medical resources to receive patients." For online purchase of drugs, especially prescription drugs, patients have higher demand for product quality authenticity and professional medication guidance than general consumers in the process of purchasing drugs When purchasing prescription drugs, they need to obtain prescriptions first, and they generally hope to use medical insurance card when paying For over-the-counter drug e-commerce, due to the characteristics of near consumer goods, online sales make information flat, while products with high degree of homogeneity make consumers take price as the main choice factor, so the price competition of drugs sold online is very fierce According to the report, in the survey, 87% of pharmaceutical retail e-commerce enterprises believe that fierce price competition is a big challenge for OTC e-commerce "Therefore, we believe that in the future OTC e-commerce competition, capacity building beyond price will be particularly important, such as brand building and service capacity upgrading." According to the report.