The pharmacy market is one healthcare segment where e-commerce is reshaping how businesses are engaging with consumers as patients and shoppers. But it’s not the only space. E-commerce also is opening more opportunities for consumers to buy a wide range of healthcare products and equipment online—and for more niche web merchants to target those consumers, according to research in the recently published 67-page Healthcare E-Commerce Report produced by Internet Health Management and Internet Retailer, both members of the Digital Commerce 360 family of e-commerce editorial and research products.
The online healthcare supplies market is dominated by Amazon, the segment’s biggest web merchant. Healthcare supplies that Amazon sells on Amazon.com and on Amazon’s marketplace totaled an estimated $2.10 billion in 2017, about one-third higher than estimated sales of $1.58 billion in 2016.
Overall, Internet Health Management estimates that Amazon accounted for 35% of all online healthcare supplies sales, which grew overall 22% in 2017. But even without including Amazon, the remaining nine healthcare supplies merchants ranked by Internet Health Management still grew faster than overall 16% increase among all merchants of $453.5 billion in 2017.
Last year the remaining healthcare supplies web merchants, which include Vitacost.com, now part of The Kroger Co., iHerb Inc., 1-800-Contacts Inc. and others, posted collective web sales up about 17% from the previous year.
What’s driving growth in the online sales of health equipment and supplies is an increase in consumer spending. That higher out-of-pocket consumer spending is opening up new e-commerce opportunities for web merchants. As consumers spend more on healthcare and take on greater responsibility for managing their own care, they’re finding themselves buying more medical equipment and supplies, and many are going online to do so. And that increase in consumer spending is opening up new e-commerce opportunities for web merchants willing to take on the complexity of selling healthcare products online, say e-commerce analysts.
“Healthcare is an e-commerce market with a lot of growth potential,” says Kate McCarthy, a former Forrester Inc. research analyst and now vice president of growth and innovation at ClearDATA.
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