Non-fundamental drug OTC switched to retail market

Last week, after the Guangdong Provincial Department of Health issued the “Guidelines for Supplements to Essential Drugs in Guangdong Province (2013 Edition)”, the variety of the base drugs, especially the exclusive ones, became hot. But some people are happy and some people worry. Yesterday a number of pharmaceutical industry sources said that the expansion of the base drug category will undoubtedly further exacerbate the survival space of non-base drugs in similar therapeutic areas. OTC (non-prescription drug) products that do not enter the base drug list will also be difficult to break into the hospital market.

When the space for non-general drug generic drugs was squeezed, related drug companies turned from exploring the hospital market to developing retail markets (mainly pharmacy channels), but they faced difficulties in the Red Sea.

This supplement will affect the market channels

OTC is a common non-prescription drug in daily life and occupies an important position in the pharmaceutical market. After this time expansion of capacity expansion, OTC products that do not enter the base drug catalog will have to withdraw from the hospital market and move to the OTC retail market. An insider of the pharmaceutical industry, who declined to be named, said that the strong promotion of the base medicine will affect the re-division of the market channels. Afterwards, the sales of pharmaceutical companies will leave two channels of terminals—the “medical institutions and the retail market”. According to the industry, medical institutions may account for about 80% of the total pharmaceutical market sales in the future, and retail channels have become “the Red Sea” after years of competition, but many pharmaceutical companies that do not enter the list of basic drugs have to be involved. .

“The basic drug market was lost and the hospital terminal market was basically lost. At the same time, competition in the OTC market was also stimulated.” Some insiders said that in order to find a way out, pharmaceutical companies that gradually lose their market in the traditional base medicine and general medicine fields will More changes will be made to non-public hospitals and OTC fields, which will bring more intense competition to the OTC traditional category market.

OTC marketing needs to be refined

According to data from the Southern Institute of Pharmaceutical Economics, the overall size of the Chinese pharmaceutical market in 2011 was 907.8 billion yuan, up 20.1% year-on-year; the OTC market size was 161.79 billion yuan, an increase of 15.4% year-on-year, slower than the national pharmaceutical market growth rate. The industry stated that since 2011, sales of many OTC products have declined, and some brands of OTC products have also shown a decline. At the same time, the news that "OTC ads are being banned" has also been buzzing, and the policy instability has further exacerbated fierce competition in the industry. How to break through the "Red Sea" market in policy adversity has become a top priority for companies that have not entered the list of drug-based pharmaceutical companies. According to Kong Zhi, a well-known real-world marketing expert in China, OTC marketing has reached the stage of elaborate management. In the short term, sales decline is normal; in the long run, this will force OTC companies to conduct marketing transformation, reform the marketing system, establish a professional OTC team, and pay more attention to terminal maintenance.