e-Commerce Ascential for GSK Consumer

UK-based Ascential Digital Commerce and GSK Consumer Healthcare (soon to become Haleon) will next week launch Ascential Digital Commerce Connect at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The data-rich digital commerce platform provides clarity about GSK CH e-Commerce brand performance and improves reaction time to market dynamics in the rapidly growing e-Commerce market. The Connect platform analyses, visualises and displays marketing data about each brand and competitor to monitor key activities and answer marketers’ key questions when it comes to:

• Understanding the current brand / sales performance in the e-Commerce marketplace – standalone vs key competitors and owned channels vs major online retailers like Amazon and Alibaba
• Dissecting what brand health looks like regionally throughout EMEA, USA / N America, Asia-Pacific & Latin America
• Navigating potential challenges and outages around supply chain, R&D, disruptive markets and other key metrics
• More accurately calculating marketing spending as a percentage of gross revenue

GSK CH expects that e-Commerce growth will reach the mid-teens percentage of the business by 2025, making it a priority channel to drive overall sales.

Nicholas Hall’s Touchpoints: Duncan Painter, the CEO of Ascential, is right when he says: “The next five years represent a tipping point in the retail industry. Retailers and brands with the deepest, most recent insights into the digital performance of their products and services will gain an informed, competitive edge.” There is an insatiable demand for e-Commerce data in the consumer healthcare market, and I’ve just signed off on a very substantial budget – at least by our standards – to buy in and provide improved e-Comms data to our client base, which I am very pleased to say for the first time ever now includes all six of the top CHC players.

e-Commerce accounted for 14% of all CHC sales in 2021 and this share is forecast to exactly double in the next decade, with a higher achievement in Asia, especially China. Some analysts are even more bullish – one we’ve looked at and rejected put e-Comms so high that the only outcome would be the complete collapse of the store retailer sector, and surely that is not going to happen! Indeed, we hear numerous reports of a revival of consumer interest in the physical shopping experience. Nevertheless, e-Commerce is part of the Future Resumed, as we now call the New Paradigm for CHC, but in a subtle omni-mix of physical and digital shopping that offers the maximum flexibility and choice to consumers wishing to self-medicate.

Stay tuned for the first edition of the agenda for our Asia-Pacific e-Conference, to be hosted by Nicholas and the team on 23 November! As well as exploring expanding possibilities in CHC within the region, this event will also include the presentation of our Regional CHC Creative Marketing Award. For more information, or to register, please contact elizabeth.bernos@NicholasHall.com.

OECD: Covid’s impact on e-Commerce

A new report published last month by the OECD, entitled e-Commerce in the time of COVID-19, explores how the pandemic has caused an expansion of e-Commerce towards “new firms, customers and types of products, likely involving a long-term shift of e-Commerce transactions from luxury goods and services to everyday necessities”. Below we pick out some of the highlights that relate to medicines.

In the opening summary, the OECD says that, “while e-Commerce in the past for many consumer groups was centred on high tech goods, toys or books, it now increasingly involves goods for which availability is critical to a large share of the population, including groceries, medicine and other necessities.” There were two examples given by the OECD from Brazil and Germany showing how e-Commerce has disrupted the medicines market.

In Brazil, “around 54% of Internet users had bought food or food products over the Internet in 2020, substantially up from only 22% in 2018. Significant increases were also observed for cosmetics, toiletries and medicines. As convenience has always been one of the key drivers of e-Commerce participation, it is likely that many of the new users will keep ordering at least some goods online in the future.”

As for Germany, “online sales grew significantly for medicines and groceries, historically laggard sectors in terms of e-Commerce, while overall online sales contracted by around 18% in March 2020 in comparison to the previous year.” The OECD report also highlighted the impact of Covid-19 on e-Commerce’s share of total retail sales in the UK, USA and EU.

Writing in last Friday’s CHC.Newsflash, Nicholas Hall said: “Let’s take the best case point-of-view, that the incidence of Covid-19 will shrink dramatically during the middle of 2021, with a significantly lower death rate. How do we get back to normal? Will personal and professional life pick up where it left off? I doubt that very much. It seems to me that, at the very least, working from home is here to stay, which could mean the revival of suburban shopping, with lower footfall in city centres and out-of-town shopping malls. One impact on consumer health could be a marked revival in community pharmacy and online purchases growing from 9% to 19% of total CHC sales globally in the next 10 years, and from 11% to 27% in Asia. Another fascinating statistic courtesy of Eurostat is that, uniquely, the over-55 cohort is the largest purchasing group for medicines online, which runs counter to the theory that digital equals youth.“

Don’t miss out on the chance to save up to 50% on selected reports with our Q4 promotional event, which will run until the end of the year! Stay tuned for new deals coming in December! To find out what promotions are available, or to make a purchase, please contact melissa.lee@NicholasHall.com

eCommerce expansion led by Amazon limits store-based growth

Continuing our series of blogs on the 10 Infinity Zones for future CHC growth outlined by Nicholas Hall, in this edition we take a closer look at eCommerce, following the news that Amazon has become the world’s most valuable brand, according to the 2019 BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking released by WPP and Kantar.

Commenting on the latest DB6 MAT Q1 2019 figures, which show that global bricks & mortar OTC growth decelerated to 3.7%, Nicholas Hall said that “Amazon goes from strength to strength, and takes a 75-90% share of all eCommerce sales of CHC products, depending on whom you listen to. These are the glory days for the so-called GAFAA companies (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba), but will it last?“

The rise of eCommerce is one of the factors causing the slowdown in store-based OTC sales, which now total US$136.7bn. According to Celine Waller, VP, DB6, store-based sales account for 78% of the global OTC market, with direct sales generating 14%. Internet & mail order currently accounts for 9% of the “all channel” universe, with sales dominated heavily by VMS supplements in China and USA.

However, this channel has seen a CAGR of 20% since 2014 and will continue to increase dramatically in importance over the next decade. In China, Alibaba continues to prosper from the Chinese government’s attempts to promote eCommerce and regulate the so-called suitcase trade (daigou), while Amazon remains supreme in the US market.

To help keep our clients abreast of these changes, this year we have introduced an “all channels” version of the DB6 dataset, which reports on topline sales of direct sales (MLM), Internet & mail order plus key brands in selected leading markets. eCommerce will also be one of the key topics in our upcoming report, Nicholas Hall’s New Paradigms for CHC 2019: Over the Horizon, written by Nicholas himself! Examine each aspect of the CHC industry in 20 chapters, with a focus on major issues including Regulation, Pharmacy Point-of-Care, M&A, Switch and much more. Nicholas will also unveil the “infinity zones” he has identified as being crucial to the future growth of the industry. In addition to this, you can upgrade your purchase to include a customised in-house presentation or webinar with Nicholas for an additional GB£10,000. To find out more or to place your order, please contact melissa.lee@NicholasHall.com.

Futuristic “smart bandages” can repair your body

Bandage technology has gradually been revolutionised in the 100 years since Band-Aids were first introduced. Researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Harvard Medical School and MIT are now ready to introduce the next century of wound care with the “smart bandage”.

The smart bandage has individual fibres that store medications which can be later implemented using a smartphone or another mobile device. The bandage is made up of electrically conductive fibres that are coated in a gel that can house medications. Antibiotics and painkillers can be used within the bandage, and possibly many other effective combinations that will enhance recovery.

Individual fibres can then be activated via voltage from a connected micro-controller no larger than a post stamp using a connected mobile device. Ali Tamayol, Assistant Professor of Mechanical & Materials Engineering at Nebraska, explained: “This is the first bandage that is capable of dose-dependent drug release, you can release multiple drugs with different release profiles.”

This is an exciting platform that can potentially be applied to many different areas of biomedical engineering and medicine. Not only could it be useful for dealing with battlefield injuries, it could also help in the treatment of chronic wounds, which are common in patients living with diabetes.

This is not the only “next gen” bandage in development. A team from Swansea University’s Institute of Life Science has created bandages laden with nano-scale sensors that can instantaneously transmit health information to medical professionals using 5G wireless data.

Hello and best wishes for 2014 from INSIGHT Asia-Pacific

The start of a new year is the ideal time to reflect on events of the previous 12 months and consider what might happen in the year ahead. INSIGHT Asia-Pacific has done just that in the just-published January edition by asking industry experts to share their views on the major trends & developments and their likely impacts in core regional OTC markets.