Cruising the Aisles of the New Cyber Pharmacies
From price to information, Net drugstores tend to beat offline rivals -- but filling prescriptions may still send you out the door
Shopping for shampoo is not my idea of my fun. Nor does buying toothpaste, razors, deodorant, and suntan lotion give me a lot of thrills. I usually forget to stock up until I have almost run out of something and then desperately grab a refill at the drugstore near my office in downtown Chicago.
If somebody offered me an alternative, I would gladly take it. Now the Internet has -- thanks to a rush of activity over the past few months. Indeed, online pharmacies have become one of the hottest areas of E-commerce in 1999 as a handful of them have set up shop. No mystery there: If people are willing to shop for books (an activity many actually enjoy in brick-and-mortar stores) over the Internet, they should certainly be willing to buy drugstore items online.
MORE SIMILARITIES. So I gave the new entrants a try. The three worth your time at this point are drugstore.com, planetRx.com, and Soma, all of which sell both prescription medications and over-the-counter items. The overall verdict: Cyber pharmacies offer many advantages, from price to information access. They still suffer from a number of glitches, such as mediocre search engines. But the sites are likely to improve in coming months. Keep in mind that with competition so fierce, they all wanted to get up and running as soon as they had a functioning product.
The one that has received the most attention is drugstore.com, which boasts Amazon.com and venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers among its investors. In just its first month of operation, drugstore.com appeared on Media Metrix' list of the 50 most visited E-commerce sites on the Net. PlanetRx.com, launched in March, is the pharmacy you're most likely to find on America Online, thanks to the $5 million that planetRx.com is paying AOL annually. Then there's Soma, whose name comes from the Greek word meaning "of the body." It was first to launch, setting up shop on Jan. 15.
The three sites have far more similarities than differences. All sell typical drugstore fare -- painkillers, lipstick, shaving cream, diapers -- but no food. All fill prescriptions over the Net. And all offer prices typically better than the ones you will find at your local Walgreens or CVS.
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You can save money on prescription items you know about in advance, but forget the ones you need in a hurry
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So how do you choose among them? First figure out whether you plan to use them for prescriptions or just over-the-counter items. If you do want to have prescriptions filled, your choice may be made for you. The three sites are still signing up insurance companies, so there's a decent chance yours will not be included. Drugstore.com, for example, claims to accept the plans of only one in three Americans right now. Forrester Research analyst Evie Black Dykema says the other two are ahead, but none is comprehensive.
My recommendation: Given their similarities, if you find only one site that accepts your insurance, stick with it for now.
Another recommendation: If you need something in a hurry, don't even think about using these sites. Delivery typically takes a few days, and overnight shipping charges are painful. Even the cheapest, Soma and planetRx.com, charge $10 and $11, respectively. Drugstore.com hits you up for $18.
For prescription items that you know about in advance, such as birth control pills or drugs to treat a chronic illness, the online stores are a good option. That's especially true when your insurance company isn't footing the bill -- because the online pharmacies often charge much less than offline drugstores. A friend who recently ordered an item from drugstore.com estimated that he saved 35%.
NO PRIVATE-LABEL BRANDS. Prescriptions aren't the only way the new pharmacies save you money. I compiled a list of 10 typical over-the-counter items and compared the total cost of shopping at each online drugstore with buying them at the pharmacy nearest my apartment. The winner: drugstore.com. There, my bill was $44.80. Soma came in second at $46.08, and planetRx.com was third at $47.40. My Walgreens: $52.91. So even with the delivery charges -- which range from $2 to $4 -- the online stores offer a better deal. And because planetRx is running a promotion that waives the shipping fee for orders above $20, it ended up with the lowest total by a nose.
One downside of the new entrants: None has a private-label brand yet. That makes it harder to save money when you don't care about buying a brand-name item. But all three say they'll introduce a private-label line soon. Drugstore.com's will be called "Good Sense."
All in all, my favorite site for money-saving was drugstore.com. It is the only one that allows you to sort by price -- though it should do a better job of explaining this to consumers. When viewing a list of products, simply click on the word "price" in the header, and the items will be re-sorted.
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You'll be able to find an explanation of almost any health condition, and that's what draws many to the drugstore sites
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Price is not the only means for comparing the sites with your local drugstore. All the sites have posted a large amount of information on both illnesses and treatments, including drugs. If you want an explanation of almost any health condition, you'll be able to find it. This is a big part of the sites' draw. They offer many more resources than a brick-and-mortar drugstore does, and they have pharmacists who will answer specific questions by E-mail. It's hard to go wrong with any of the sites.
The three do much worse, however, when it comes to the organization of their sites. All need to improve their search engines. The smallest difference between the way you type in a product and the way it appears in the sites' databases can cause a search to come up empty. Not knowing how to spell "Robitussin," for example, left me lurching me about in virtual darkness. "We're fixing that," says planetRx.com co-founder Stephanie Schear, echoing similar comments from rivals.
When you do get a match, the sites still leave something to be desired. Drugstore.com doesn't tell you how many hits it found -- so you have no idea whether you'll need to click through a dozen lists of lipstick or just a couple. Meanwhile, Soma's search engine is too inclusive. It gave me a list of many toothpaste brands after I had entered "colgate toothpaste." Better organization could significantly cut down on the amount of time it takes to shop -- and give the online pharmacies a clear advantage over drugstores you have to drive or walk to.
What else would help? More "family-style" package sizes for those of us who like to stock up for months in advance. Private-label brands. And broader insurance coverage. But the three sites are off to a good start. When my bathroom cabinet starts to empty out next time, I am going to make a big order at one of the three and not worry about lugging items home or running out of something anytime soon. After all, finding the shampoo bottle empty at 7 a.m. is never pleasant.
Chicago correspondent Leonhardt wrote about online shopping in the May 10 edition of Business Week in a story entitled "Checking Out the Corner Cyberstore"
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