A Dow Jones news story about the price war
NEW YORK (AP)--How much would you pay for potent sex? Ten dollars a pill? Nine?
A new Kmart Corp. (KM) advertisement tells impotent men they'll pay not $10, not $9, but less than $8 for the new potency pill, Pfizer Inc.'s (PFE) Viagra.
Archrival Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) says it offers a better bedroom bargain: $7.80, just 80 cents over Viagra's $7 wholesale price.
The runaway popularity of the impotence tablet has retailers taking the unusual step of luring consumers with low prescription prices.
Kmart, a Troy, Mich.-based retailer with 1,500 in-store pharmacies, took out ads in The Wall Street Journal and USA Today this week to promote its $39.99 price for five pills, compared to about $50 at most other pharmacies.
Drug makers have increasingly pitched their pills to the public, and pharmacies routinely give discounts to large managed care insurers, but it remains unusual for retailers to advertise the price of prescription drugs.
"This is offering the best prices _ it is nothing new for Kmart," Kmart spokesman Dan Jarvis said. "This is a product that's helped a lot of people.
It's been very popular, almost a phenomenon, across the nation."
Wal-Mart, a Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer with 2,329 pharmacies, says it has the industry's lowest price, at $38.98 for five tablets.
"We have been very pleased with the way our customers have been responding to Viagra," spokesman Bryan Holmberg said. "Our pharmaceutical associates have been very diligent in seeing that our shelves are stocked with the product."
The retail giants' prices appear beat the widely varying prices paid by consumers. Duane Reade Inc. (DRD) stores in New York charge about $10. CVS Corp. (CVS) charges an average of $9.68 per pill for a five-pill bottle at its 4,100 stores in 25 states. But senior citizens get a 10% discount, bringing the cost to a more competitive $8.71.
Prices may be even higher on the black market.
"I've heard some weird things, like the pills are selling up to $100 a pill in Japan and wholesale pharmacists are selling massive amounts to intermediaries who are getting them to countries where the drug is not government-approved yet," Boston University urologist Irwin Goldstein said.
At any price, Viagra sales are surging.
Patients picked up 906,368 new prescriptions for Viagra from April 3 through May 8, according to IMS Health, a private industry researcher based in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., that tracks drug sales at the pharmacy level.
Analysts who had originally estimated the drug would draw sales of perhaps $300 million this year are now saying it looks like it will top the blockbuster level of $1 billion and could exceed $3.5 billion within four years.
(END) DOW JONES NEWS 05-21-98
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