Opportunities to grow Non-dispensed Health and Personal Care Sector in Pharmacies - says New Report

KIDDERMINSTER, U.K. - March 7, 2016 - PRLog -- A major healthcare market report covering 18 main markets of the European Union plus Norway and Switzerland shows a combined population of 473 million buying non-dispensed personal care and non-prescription OTC medicines from pharmacies with a sales value of over $57.4 billion in 2015.

The report OTC Distribution in Europe – the 2016 edition - the New Global Agenda  by James Dudley Management says that across Europe more than a quarter of pharmacy sales stem from non-medicinal lines other than prescription medicines. These include nutritional and baby products, health related and premium personal care items, cosmetics, nursing aids, hygiene products and medical devices. Together these represent 27% of turnover of an average pharmacy in Europe.

While pharmacies compete with supermarkets, specialised outlets, the Internet and other non-pharmacy channels in such categories as cosmetics, nutrition and baby products, those that can add or exploit health related factors can both win share and attract premium prices. It also goes without saying that pharmacies are retail outlets from which consumers expect to obtain non-prescription OTC medicines. 85% of the licensed non-prescription pharmaceuticals' market in the 20 countries under study is delivered through pharmacies.

Figure 1 shows the relative importance of consumer purchases of personal and healthcare including non-prescription medicines in turnover terms in the average pharmacy sales mix for each country. The importance of non-dispensed personal and healthcare sector is relatively high for Bulgarian, Polish, Italian, Swiss and Hungarian pharmacies compared to the average as market statistics from the report show.

There are opportunities to expand the personal and healthcare sectors through the retail pharmacy channel in those markets where non-dispensed pharmacy ranges have turnovers below the European average share i.e. Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Finland, Slovakia, United Kingdom, Denmark, and Sweden.

Figure 1. Average % Share of Turnover taken by Consumer Purchases of Consumer Health and Personal Care including OTC Self-medication per Pharmacy (excluding prescription business) Compared by Country - 20 Country European OTC Distribution Study

European State	Average % Share of Turnover per Pharmacy
Bulgaria	58%
Poland	41%
Italy	39%
Switzerland	35%
Hungary	33%
Austria	32%
Belgium	32%
Norway	32%
Romania	32%
Czech	31%
Spain	28%
France	27%
Sweden	25%
Denmark	23%
Finland	21%
Slovakia	21%
UK	21%
Slovenia	20%
Netherlands	19%
Germany	17%
Average 20 Countries	27%

Source: James Dudley Management OTC Distribution in Europe 2016 edition