Pharmacy sales appear to be the next battleground for online retailers as Amazon roll out their own range of pharmacy products in the US as we predicted earlier this year. Amazon have rolled out a range of own brand product under the brand ‘Basic Care‘.
The Basic Care own label aligns neatly with the ‘Amazon Basics‘ label which covers home, consumer electronics, pets, sporting goods and a range of other product verticals. Naturally Amazon Basic Care comes with all of the benefits consumers associate with Amazon Prime for subscribers, such as fast free delivery with a range of click and collect options.
Seeing Amazon branch out into new industries such as Grocery, Pantry and now Pharmacy has prompted other retailers both online and offline to re-examine their strategies and one such retailer is Weldricks Pharmacy.
“Online health specialist Weldricks Pharmacy has launched a new service that will allow customers next day collection of up to 15kg of medical supplies, toiletries and other products from one of Pass My Parcel’s 3,500 dedicated parcel shops.”
– Liz Morrell, Editor, eDelivery
It’s somewhat interesting that Weldricks have chosen Pass My Parcel as Amazon also partner with them for same day deliveries in the UK. In today’s world customers clearly want deliveries to be at times and locations that suit their busy lifestyles so it’s not surprising that Weldricks have chosen the same best in class provider.
Pharmacies are going to have some tough business decisions to make – do they compete by listing on marketplace or do they compete by being better than marketplaces? Currently Amazon are selling over the counter medications, but that doesn’t mean they won’t attack the prescription business in the near future.
What this does mean for merchants is that if you offer pharmaceutical products on Amazon then you already have some new competition from Amazon in the US and probably soon will have in the UK.
