March 12, 2000
Business on
the Information Highways
Imagine: you have a nagging
cough that will not go away unless you take a cough mixture that coats your
throat with a relieving healer. Suddenly,
to your dismay, the last drop of this medicine disappears. It is raining outside so you do not want to
go out twice, once to order the medicine and once to pick it up. What are you supposed to do now, sit and let
your cough dominate your life? Your throat hurts so much that you just cannot
call and order you prescription so that it will be ready when you get to your
local Rite-Aid to pick it up. Maybe the
cough is not so nagging, and you just have trouble getting around, but you are
still in need of a medicine. Ordering
prescriptions is so easy online! They
will deliver at no exra charge unless you want it right away, and a medicine
can arrive at your door step within a week or two. Prescriptions.com offers the perfect solution. Reorder your prescription online, and head
over to your local Rite-Aid to pick it up.
If you can hang on for a couple days, they’ll ship it to you! Sure, this seems like a farfetched scenario,
but online pharmacies are the wave of the future! Many companies now offer fulfillment and shipping of
prescriptions through online interfaces.
For example, www.eMD.com features a
physician site and a consumer site. The
website www.rx.com provides prescriptions only,
while www.accuratepharmacy.com provides homecare heath
care. Finally, www.PrescriptionOnline.com
provides simple searches for prescription drugs. Although all are well established and reliable sites, I will be
examining the business model of and
explaining the advantages and disadvantages
of using this valuable online service.
I have chosen to describe this one because drugstore.com not only
provides prescription drugs, but other common drugstore type items as well.
Drugstore.com offers a variety of
products and information on heath, beauty, wellness, personal care and pharmacy
products. Their goal is to provide “a
convenient, private, and informative shopping experience that encourages
consumers to buy products essential to healthy everyday living.” There are a variety of convenient features
built into the website if you choose to open an online “account” there. With a free account, one can create a
personal shopping list, have e-mail reminders to replenish regularly used
products, privately e-mail pharmacists and beauty experts about any questions, and
search the website of specific products, ingredients or prescriptions.
Drugstore.com has many partnerships that
make it a very valuable resource: it has acquired www.beauty.com, has
partnerships with GNC and Riteaid corporation.
These three companies that are incorporated into drugstore.com make the
website a valuable tool for the acquiring of knowledge and the distribution of
goods. The partnership with GNC gives
drugstore.com the exclusive rights to market and sell GNC products online. With the Rite-Aid partnership, customers can
order their prescriptions online, and pick them up at their local Rite-aid,
whether the prescription is new or a refill.
In addition to having
valuable partnerships, Drugstore.com has a very effective marketing base. In addition to a advertisings on America
Online, Inc., Yahoo!, Discovery Health, MSNBC, OnHealth, ThirdAge, Medscape,
Intelihealth, and Women.com, dugstore.com has a partnership with
Amazon.com. Amazon.com has agreed to
market drugtore.com on their website to create traffic for drugstore.com. In addition to advertisements, drugstore.com
has an Associate Program that enables associated Web sites to make products and
services available through a link.
Drugstore.com is able to
provide prescriptions because it is a licensed pharmacy. To be able to get prescriptions, you must set
up an account at drugtore.com and send them
your prescriptions. After those two
simple steps, they will fill your prescriptions, ship your order,
and bill your insurance
or credit card. With regards to
shipping new prescriptions, it could take up to two weeks, but they can ship
anywhere, even if you do not live in the same state as where the headquarters
are located. But if you know that you
will be needing an item, such as a long term heart medication, you can order it
and it will be there when you need it.
They will send out e-mail confirmations at every step of the way,
letting you know that everything is going swell! r
Why should someone trust
their health in the hands of a silly little online website? Drugstore.com is certified but the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy
with the certification of VIPPS:
Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites.
To check out drugstore.com’s certification, click on the link below:
To be VIPPS certified, a
pharmacy must comply with the licensing and inspection requirements of their
state and each state to which they dispense their pharmaceuticals. These sites also comply with criterion
including patient rights to privacy, authentication and security of
prescription orders, adherence to a recognized quality assurance policy and
provision of meaningful consolation between patients and pharmacists.
The Better Business Bureau Online site also
certifies Drugstore.com. The mission of
this site is “Helping
Web users find reliable, trustworthy businesses online, and helping reliable
businesses identify themselves as such, through a voluntary self-regulatory
program that promotes consumer trust and confidence on the Internet.” To see Drugstore.com’s certification, click
on the link below:
Another advantage of
drugstore.com is that instead of making a trip to the drugstore, you can manage
everything from your own desktop!
Standard shipping of prescriptions is free, while 2 day shipping and
overnight are just a fraction of the price of an expensive medication. Also, health and medical information is
available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Never will you be left wondering if your cough medicine will react
adversely with your headache medicine, or if your acne medicine will dry your
skin.
Although drugstore.com is
very convenient in that you would never have to leave your house, the main
disadvantage is that getting your items, especially prescriptions, takes up to
2 weeks if the prescription is a new one.
Yet, if your medicine is some type of acne medicine or some long term
drug that you know you are running out of and you know you will be needing in a
week or two, online prescription filling works well. Online, you can by in bulk, cutting costs by a few dollars here
and there.
Conclusion:
Drugstore.com not only fills prescriptions
conveniently, but also can ship you your most important hygiene items, such as
deodorant, shampoo and soap. For
college students who live on campus without a car, this service is ideal
because the students will never have to leave the comfort of their own dorm
room. All in all, drugstore.com
provides convenience, valuable information and low, competitive prices all in
one place! I believe that this service
will become widely used in the future as the world becomes more connected to
the Internet. It is so easy to order
online if you know what you need, and drugtore.com makes it easier to keep
track of what you need! Maybe other
services like drugtore.com will try to rival the mastery of this website, but
will not come close because drugstore.com does not only sell prescriptions, but
regular drugstore items as well!