Q: Will the current inclination of the pharmaceutical regulatory policy toward the large logistics direction play an important leading role in the development of pharmaceutical e-commerce industry? Will the blood capillary type terminal marketing of O2O be affected by the policy? Besides, is it possible to develop group purchase in terminal market of pharmaceutical e-commerce?
Shi Lichen: Pharmaceutical regulation will only be strengthened in 2015, regardless of pharmacy, circulation or terminal. The new version GSP will not be easily passed like before because the regulation tends to be strengthened; and even new version GSP is passed, monitoring will be strengthened during the operation of commercial enterprises.
Logistics distribution for pharmaceutical e-commerce will be relatively difficult. Currently, pharmaceutical e-commerce basically relies on non-pharmaceutical express companies such as Yuantong and Shentong for distribution. China has stated in the Opinion Seeking Draft that social third-party logistics can conduct the distribution, however, the auditing qualification and standards, etc. are not introduced, and it is uncertain which express companies will be used. It is basically impossible to complete B2C distribution by depending on the pure pharmaceutical commercial system. Therefore, it will be a large problem and what we can do now is to wait for the policy.
As pharmaceutical products are not equivalent to articles for daily use, operation of pharmaceutical e-commerce will certainly not allow you to conduct group purchase like in Baidu Nuomi, Meituan and Wowotuan, etc., furthermore, online sales model and promotional mode of pharmaceutical e-commerce will be monitored, and even for the pharmacies: they can only offer discount for promotion. Therefore, it is impossible for group purchase, but it may be feasible for B2B group purchase.
