On May 25, the second international pharmaceutical forum Pharmacies of the World 2013 ended. The forum hotly discussed the problems and achievements of the pharmacy industry in Russia, Europe, Ukraine and Turkey. Among the most discussed topics, the issue of increasing sales using modern marketing tools has repeatedly sounded.
As the speakers noted, over the past ten years in Russia a number of major reforms have been carried out in the regulation of the pharmacy business. So certification was introduced, a list of vital medicines was approved, an additional drug support program was introduced, and methods for forming retail selling prices were determined.
All these measures contributed to lower retail prices for pharmaceuticals for the end consumer and stimulated the pharmacy business to seek new marketing approaches to increase sales and revenues. They considered aspects of building a network of service pharmacies, in which, in addition to selling medicines, other related services are provided to clients and various consultations are provided.
Another way of increasing sales, according to many speakers, is the focus of pharmacies on expanding the circle of customers while reducing retail prices to almost wholesale levels. A similar program of wholesale prices is available in the online pharmacy www.wer.ru.
Considerable attention was paid to the international exchange of experience and technology. Participants from Ukraine, the countries of the European Union and Turkey made reports on the development of the pharmacy business in their countries.
Other measures to increase the profitability of the pharmacy business, such as improving logistics, consolidation and cooperation of market participants, were also considered. Excellent indicators in this direction are given by the orientation of distributors to work with orders via the Internet on-line.
It was noted that recently the number of Internet users has been growing rapidly. Accordingly, this segment of the market is becoming extremely important for the pharmacy business. Many pharmacies and pharmacy chains create their own sites. There are also specialized online pharmacies , such as www.wer.ru.
In general, despite the presence of certain difficulties in the development of the pharmacy business both in Russia and in other countries, the vast majority of forum participants are optimistic about the future.