Since 2008, the Leclerc group has wanted to start selling non-reimbursed drugs. Its main argument is to succeed in lowering drug prices by 25% to 30%.
Since 2008, Michel-Edouard Leclerc has been interested in the market for drugs sold without a prescription. Logical when we know that in 2012, paracetamol remains the best-selling drug in France. However, this Friday, the supermarket giant has just lost a new battle! While the Competition Authority pleaded this week to open a breach in the monopoly of pharmacies, Marisol Touraine reiterated her opposition to the sale of non-prescription drugs in supermarkets.
Yet it is difficult to imagine that man lost the war. For five years, the businessman has multiplied communication campaigns to get a piece of the pie. The market weighs nearly 2 billion euros in France.
A drop of water according to him. The boss of supermarkets prefers to advance another argument: to offer consumers drugs that will be between 25 and 30% cheaper compared to a pharmacy price. And to make himself heard, it is with advertising spots that he will hammer out his message in 2009. Banned at first by the CSA, then broadcast, the advertisement is attacked in court. But the Colmar Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the distributor.
In 2012, it rebelled with a new campaign (see below) which features a qualified pharmacist banned from selling drugs in a pharmacy of a Leclerc supermarket. New controversy, the man then drew the wrath of the Order of Pharmacists. In February 2013, Michel-Edouard Leclerc explains again at the microphone of Canal +, wanting to sell cheaper. The Leclerc Centers already have nearly 200 drugstore centers and as many pharmacy graduates. “Today, there is not really much competition between pharmacies,” he explains. “There is a difference of one to two in the prices of pharmacy products, so we will try to put a little competition in this sector”.
A sector that looks promising. According to the Afipa Observatory “for responsible self-medication”, the market share in volume of self-medication in France remains lower than the average for other European countries (15.3% in France against 23.3% in Europe). The average annual expenditure on self-medication products per inhabitant amounts to 34.5 euros in France for a European average slightly above 39 euros. There is therefore significant room for improvement. In a rather depressed general economic context.
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