Pharmacy & Drug Stores

April 4, 2012 — The Editors

Drug Retailing

The sale of drugs, whether over-the-counter or prescription drugs, has been a healthy, growing business for a long time in the United States. The sale of these products through pharmacies and drug stores is the subject of our post today. The graph presents sales of these retailers over the period 1992–2010. The annual growth rate in sales over this period was 10.3%, a third faster than the economy as a whole, which grew at 7.2% annually.

Worth noting is the fact that over this same time period, the number of retail outlets selling drugs has increased as Big Box stores, grocery stores and others have gotten into the business of selling drugs with enthusiasm. Consequently, the role of pharmacies and drug stores in total drug sales has actually declined over this period.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2000 and 2010
Market size: $130.87 billion and $222.26 billion respectively

Source: Annual Retail Trade Survey 2009, and updates from the Monthly Retail Trade Reports from the same reporting series, U.S. Census Bureau, available oneline here.
Original source: U.S. Departmetn of Commerce, Bureau of the Census
Posted on April 4, 2012

Posted in Drugs, Pharmaceutical Industry, Retail Outlets. No Comments »

Prescription Drug Sales

January 24, 2012 — The Editors

Expenditures on health care in the United States have been much in the news for years now. The prices for prescription drugs are among the fastest growing of the segments of this overall industry. And yet, prescription drugs make up only around 10 percent of all expenditures on health care.

Today’s market size is the size of the market for prescription drugs sold through retail outlets in 2000 and 2010. In 2000 58 percent of the prescription drugs sold through retail outlets were brand name drugs. In 2010 brand name drugs accounted for 29 percent of those sales.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2000 and 2010
Market size: $145.57 and $266.39 billion respectively
Source: Table 159. Retail Prescription Drug Sales,” Statistical Abstract of the United States 2012, page 113, U.S. Census Bureau, September 27, 2011, available here.
Original source: National Association of Chain Drug Stores
Posted on January 24, 2012

Posted in Drugs, Retail Outlets. No Comments »

DTC Drug Advertising

January 20, 2012 — The Editors

Ad Spending

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs is a big business in the United States, as it is in New Zealand, the only other country in which this activity is legal. Anyone who watches TV for more than an hour or two a week will be more than familiar with the sorts of ads we are talking about, those that invariably end with an ominous list of potential side effects of the very drugs being pushed.

Until the late 1990s this advertising was quite limited by FDA regulations but in 1997 the FDA announced changes to those regulation (implemented in 1999) that freed up the pharmaceutical industry to start producing stylish ad campaigns for its most popular prescription drugs. The industry took full advantage, as the graph to the left clearly shows. Industry analysts suggest that the slowdown in spending starting in 2007 had more to do with the expiration of important brand name drugs (and their replacement with generics for which such spending is not done) than with the beginning of the recession.

Today’s market size is the amount spent by pharmaceutical companies on DTC prescription drug advertising in 2008.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2008
Market size: $4.57 billion
Source: For the data from 1989 through 2001: Francis B. Palumbo and C. Daniel Mullins, “The Development of Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising Regulations, Food and Drug Law Journal, Volume 57, Number 2, 2002. For the data from 2002 through 2005: Donahue Ph.D., Julie M., Marisa Cevasco, B.A. and Meredith B. Rosenthan, Ph.D., “A Decade of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs,” The New England Journal of Medicine, August 16, 2007. For data from 2006 through 2008 the data are from Neilsen Media press releases.
Posted on January 20, 2012

Posted in Advertising, Drugs, Pharmaceutical Industry. No Comments »

Medical Marijuana

August 24, 2011 — The Editors

As of March 2011 there were laws in seven U.S. states that made it legal to sell and use marijuana for medicinal purposes. Those states were California, Colorado, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. Four additional states and the District of Columbia are scheduled to open markets for medical marijuana before the end of 2011: Arizona, Maine, New Jersey, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia. The laws regulating the sale and use of marijuana in these states vary widely which makes tracking the market a complicated task. But as a fast growing market the motivation to track it is present. And the task is made easier by the fact that marijuana is a highly regulated commodity and is therefore tracked carefully by most of the states in which its use for medical purposes is legal.

Today’s market size is the estimated value of marijuana sold legally in the United States. As a point of comparison, and according to the source, the sale of Viagra in the United States in 2010 was valued at $1.93 billion.

Geographic reference: Select States within the United States
Year: 2011
Market size: $1.7 billion
Source: Wayne Heilman, “Report: Medical marijuana sales to reach $1.7B this year,” The Gazette, Colorado Springs, March 24, 2011, available online here.
Original source See Change Strategy and Medical Marijuana Markets

Posted in Drugs, Pharmaceutical Industry. No Comments »

Digital Prescriptions

April 27, 2011 — The Editors

Approximately one third of all prescriptions written by doctors in Estonia, in January 2010, were digital.

Geographic reference: Estonia
Year: 2010 (January)
Market size: 306,000
Source: “One Third of Prescriptions Written Digitally in Estonia,” February 2, 2010, available online here.

Posted in Drugs, Health Care, Information Technology, Pharmaceutical Industry. No Comments »

Drug Company R&D

January 24, 2011 — The Editors

The market size presented here is an estimate of the dollars spent by the pharmaceutical industry on research and developement in 2009. This is a thorny and complex subject—what costs are included in R&D and how do pharmaceutical companies decide what to spend on developing new drugs and to modify old ones. For anyone interested in the subject beyond this quick snap shot, we recommend a report titled “Research and Development in the Pharmaceutical Industry,” published in 2006 by the Congressional Budget Office, and available online here.

Geographic reference: World
Year: 2009
Market size: $45.8 Billion
Source: “New Federal Research Center Will Help Develop Medicines,” The New York Times, Page 1, January 23, 2011
Original Source: Industry estimate

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IBD Drug Market

October 11, 2010 — The Editors

IBD stands for Irritable Bowl Disease. An estimated 1.2 million Americans suffer from IBD. Leading brand name drugs designed to treat this disease include Asacol HD, Shire Lialda, Shire Pentasa and Prometheus Entocort EC.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2009
Market size: $1.56 Billion
Source: “Santaris,” January 11, 2010.
Original source: IMS Health

Posted in Drugs, Market Size. No Comments »

Lice Treatments

October 8, 2010 — The Editors

With recent news about the reemergence of a bedbug infestation, we are reminded that the little pests that infest our lives from time to time must be dealt with over and over again. Lice are such pests and while not spoken of very often, the size of the market for lice treatments suggests that many battle these little pests in silence, behind closed doors.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2009
Market size: $65.88 Million
Source: MMR, April 19, 2010, p. 69.
Original source: SymphonyIRI

Posted in Chemicals, Drugs, Market Size. No Comments »

Allergy Treatments

October 6, 2010 — The Editors

The size of the market for drugs to treat allergies has fallen during the first decade of the 2000s. The likely reason for this decline in the value of sales is not a decline in the number of people suffering from allergies, rather it has to do with the fact that generic drugs have come onto the scene to compete with the leading name brand drugs. This was possible because the patents on several of those name brand drugs expired in the middle of the decade.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2003 and 2007
Market size: $7.5 Billion and $5.1 Billion respectively
Source: Medical Marketing & Media, May 2008, p. 64.
Original source: IMS Health

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Antipsychotic Drug Market

October 5, 2010 — The Editors

Just two decades ago antipsychotic drugs were a minor part of the overall pharmaceutical business. Today, according to The New York Times article from which this market size was taken, antipsychotics lead all other drug classes in term of revenue generated. One’s first thought upon reading this may be that we must be getting way more psychotic but it turns out that these strong drugs are now prescribed for a much broader range of ills.

The top-selling brand of this drug category is Seroquel, produced by AstraZeneca. Other leading brands include Abilify, Geoden, Leponex, Riserdal and Zyprexa. Some of these drug names may be familiar to you even though they are prescription drugs and even though you may never have used one. That has to do with direct-to-consumer advertising (DTC advertising) which was made legal in the United States in 1997. Since then, we have all become far more educated about brand name prescription drugs. Interestingly, only one other nation in the world (New Zealand) allows the direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs.

Geographic reference: United States
Year: 2009
Market size: $14.6 Billion
Source: The New York Times, October 3, 2010, page B1.

Posted in Drugs, Market Size, Pharmaceutical Industry. No Comments »
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