Eighty-five percent of insured Amazon Prime members would be comfortable purchasing prescription drugs on the e-commerce giant's website, according to a Deutsche Bank study cited by CNBC.
Amazon announced its intent to purchase online pharmacy PillPack for about $1 billion in June. The pharmacy deal, coupled with its dominant Prime service that offers free two-day shipping, makes Amazon's push into the pharmacy space logical, and the survey findings pose a huge opportunity for the online retailer, according to Deutsche Bank analysts.
"Amazon has a history of starting small, testing the market and fine-tuning the service before launching a full-fledged commercial operation," analysts wrote, according to CNBC. "As such, we believe it is a question of when and where — and not if — Amazon enters the healthcare space more forcefully."
Once the Amazon-PillPack transaction is closed, analysts predict that Amazon will make headway in the mail order pharmacy market and may even use its 450 Whole Foods stores as prescription pick-up locations.
According to Lloyd Walmsley, an analyst at Deutsche, if Amazon can gain a 30 percent share of the mail order pharmacy market, which is valued at $22 billion, as well as about $55 billion of front office sales and obtain 4 percent of U.S. online healthcare advertising, it could add $3 billion in gross profit from its entrance into the pharmacy arena.
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