Forum "Pharmacies of the World - 2013": Online pharmacies on the rise.

On May 25, the second international pharmaceutical forum "Pharmacies of the World-2013" finished. The forum hotly discussed the problems and achievements of the pharmacy industry in Russia, Europe, Ukraine and Turkey. Among the most discussed topics repeatedly raised the issue of increasing sales using modern marketing tools.

As noted by speakers, over the past ten years in Russia, a number of important reforms in the regulation of pharmacy business. So the certification was introduced, the list of vital medicines was approved, the program of additional medicinal provision was introduced and the methods of forming retail selling prices were determined.

All these measures helped to reduce retail prices for medicines for the end user and stimulated the pharmacy business to look for new marketing approaches to increase sales and revenues. The aspects of building service pharmacy networks were considered, in which, besides the sale of medicines, other related services are provided to clients and various consultations are provided.

Another way to increase sales, according to many speakers is the direction of pharmacies to expand the number 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.

Much attention was paid to the international exchange of experience and technology. Participants from Ukraine, the countries of the European Commonwealth and Turkey gave presentations on the development of pharmacy business in their countries.

Other measures to improve the profitability of the pharmacy business, such as improvement of logistics, consolidation and cooperation of market participants were also considered. Excellent indicators in this direction gives the orientation of distributors to work with orders through the Internet in on-line mode.

It was noted that in recent years the number of Internet users has been growing rapidly. Accordingly, this segment of the market becomes extremely important for the pharmacy business. Many pharmacies and pharmacy chains create their own websites. There are also specialized online pharmacies , such as www.wer.ru.

In general, despite the presence of certain difficulties in the development of pharmacy business in Russia and in other countries, the vast majority of forum participants are optimistic about the future.