Going to the Pharmacy?

Amazon announced the launch of a new prescription medication service, Amazon Pharmacy, this week. “As more and more people look to do their daily grocery shopping from their homes, the pharmacy is an important and necessary addition to Amazon's online store,” said Doug Herrington, Amazon customer relationship manager for North America.

As our graph with data from the Statista Global Consumer Survey shows, only 70 percent of Americans said they used brick-and-mortar pharmacies in the past year to purchase any drugs – prescription or OTC. In the United States, a high number of people also purchased drugs from supermarkets and other stores (33% of respondents), since many have integrated pharmacy counters and the country’s laws allow for most OTC products to be kept on store shelves. In Germany, which lacks this convenient option due to more restrictive laws pertaining to OTC medications, online pharmacies were the second most popular option, with 37 percent saying they had used them in the past year. Americans were actually less likely to have purchased medications online, the survey found.

Chinese respondents were also likely to purchase medication online at pharmacies, and many also used other online shops for these purchases. The French were among the most avid customers of physical pharmacies, with almost 90 percent reporting to using one in the past 12 months.