Study On The Development Of Drug Retail Chain In China

With the development of modern economy, the chain operation changed the circulation industry thoroughly. This new operation mode has promoted the process of modernization in some emerging industrialized nations and regions since they introduced it from 1960s.The chain operation has grown rapidly, penetrating from retail industry, restaurant industry to other service industries since China introduced it in 1980s.Pharmacy chain has been brisk since the strict regulation in medicine retail industry relaxed with the furthering of reform and opening-up in 1990s. The National Economy and Trade Commission (the organization was abolished and was incorporated into the Ministry of Commerce in 2003)issued the Directives for Furthering Reform on Medicine Circulation System to encourage medical retail enterprises to adopt the chain operation mode in 1999.The related national departments revoked the restriction on the trans-provincial or trans-municipal operation of pharmacy chains in May,2000. The medicine distribution was lifted out of restrictions in January,2003.China also has implemented and deepened five policies on medical reform, namely, medical system reform, diversified operation of medical and pharmaceutical industries, circulation system reform and medicine prices reform.These policies are good preparations for the development of pharmacy chains.However, there is potential of crises in the expansion of pharmacy chains. The low price pharmacy chains such as Kaixin Pharmacy have been popular since the second half of the year 2001. Therefore, the margins of medicines went down sharply and some of pharmacies even closed their businesses.According to the statistics provided by the Medical and Pharmaceutical Associate, one third of pharmacy chains gained, one third lost, one third were at the break-even point in 2004.The profitability in the whole industry has taken on continuing down trend. Not only some small-scale pharmacy chains but also some large-scale chains withdrew from the market in 2006.It is no exaggeration that the development of pharmacy chains is obstructed seriously. Therefore, it is meaningful to strengthen the exploration and research on the operation of drugs chain store.The article uses the normative analysis method to explore how to develop the drugs chain store in our country. Firstly, it simply reviews the chain store theory, is the introduction to the concept, characteristics and three modes of chain operationt;Besides, it analyzes the advantages to adopt chain operation in medicine retail industry.Then analyzed the reasons of the development of a chain pharmacy, it is the product of the fierce market competition and self-purchase as well as the the government encourages and the management.Then compared the drugs chain stores of China with the USA's and Japan's,and analyzed the problems of China's chain drugstores in the development;Finally,in the current favorable situation of the development,put forward a number of strategy proposals about China's chain drugstores development.The innovation of this article is that although there are a lot studies about the chain store management, but specialized research about the drugs chain store are not so much, it only has some analyses and the commentary in the periodical and the magazine, on the base of reading correlation literature, I have got a systematic induction and the analysis about the development and the question of drugs chain store, and proposes the corresponding measure.