OTC Healthcare in Croatia
Euromonitor International's OTC Healthcare in Croatia market report offers a comprehensive guide to the size and shape of the market at a national level. It provides the latest retail sales data, allowing you to identify the sectors driving growth. It identifies the leading companies, the leading brands and offers strategic analysis of key factors influencing the market - be they new product developments, packaging innovations, economic/lifestyle influences, distribution or pricing issues. Forecasts illustrate how the market is set to change.
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Tables: 14 | Publication date: Mar 2007
Why buy this report
- Get insight into trends in market performance
- Pinpoint growth sectors and identify factors driving change
- Identify market and brand leaders and understand the competitive environment
Product coverage
Adult mouthcare; Allergy care; Analgesics; Calming and sleeping products; Child-specific OTC healthcare; Cough; cold and allergy (hay fever) remedies; Digestive remedies; Ear care; Emergency contraception; Eye care; Medicated skin care; NRT Smoking cessation aids; OTC obesity; OTC statins; Vitamins and dietary supplements; Wound treatments
Executive summary
General overview
The majority of OTC product sales in Croatia are made through chemists/pharmacies, which hold by far the largest share of retail distribution value. Some 2,300 products are registered as OTC in Croatia. The OTC market is increasingly being dominated by the big multinationals. The small private manufacturers that were successful during the 1990s have a very hard time competing with these international giants. While before the Croatian War of Independence (which started in 1990) only some of the big global manufacturers of OTC products were present on the Croatian market (like Bayer), the rest of them started penetrating the market gradually during the late 1990s.
Distribution channels changed due to new law in 2004
When new laws were enacted in 2004, the “herbal” pharmacies that had been very popular during the 1990s and the early 2000s ceased to exist. If they wanted to stay in business, they had three choices, with the first two being to either close or to turn into healthfood stores. The third was to upgrade themselves into “regular”/“classic” pharmacies and also start selling the “classic” prescription medicines. However, this required the hiring of more qualified staff (licensed pharmacists with a university degree and at least one year of practice) and expanding the premises to the required minimum of 80 sq m with adequate storage space. Their laboratory now had to be on the premises, which many of them could not afford. This resulted in bankruptcies not only of many well-established herbal pharmacies, but also in changes to the product lines of many small private herbal laboratories and manufacturers.
New trends in distribution channels
Healthfood stores are not required to employ trained and licensed pharmacists; therefore they are not permitted to sell the whole OTC range, only vitamins, food supplements and a very limited range of other OTC products. At the same time as the disappearance of the herbal pharmacies, healthfood departments in the large hypermarket and supermarket chains started appearing. Some of the cosmetics and toiletries chains, such as DM and its newly established local counterpart Kozmo (established by the end of 2005 by the Konzum chain, owned by the Agrokor group), also opened such departments, and thus quickly became a very important distribution channel for those OTC products that are allowed to be sold in outlets other than pharmacies. Consequently, vitamins and food supplements are now more widely present on the market.
The natural ingredients trend
This trend has been increasing steadily for the last 15 years, and is especially strong in the OTC segment. Garlic, omega 3, gingko, ginseng and echinacea are the representatives of already well-established natural ingredients, used in lots of different products by various manufacturers, and with new ones appearing every year. Among the recent natural ingredients are artichoke, broccoli, olive oil and essential oils.
Preference for remedies made on the spot still present, even increasing again
In some OTC categories, many consumers of all generations and backgrounds, if they have a choice, still rather buy their favourite pharmacy's own product (especially if it is based on herbs, organic and natural ingredients or traditional recipes) in generic bottles and boxes, often with a handwritten label and with a shorter shelf life, even when it costs slightly more than a factory-made, attractively packaged OTC product manufactured by a big international concern. This trend decreased significantly when a wider choice of remedies manufactured by large pharmaceuticals appeared, but in the last few years it has been increasing again. The possible reasons for this are better education with regard to health, the healthy lifestyle trend, increased awareness among the population of what it is consuming, and the perception of the local pharmacy’s laboratory-made remedies as containing "fewer chemicals and more healthy ingredients".
Table of contents
OTC HEALTHCARE IN CROATIA : MARKET INSIGHT
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
2. OPERATING ENVIRONMENT
2.1 OTC Registration and Classification
2.2 Vitamins & Dietary Supplements Registration and Classification
2.3 Advertising
2.4 Packaging and Labelling
2.5 Distribution
2.6 De-listing or De-reimbursement
2.7 Traditional Remedies
2.8 Homeopathy
2.9 Generics
2.10 Consumer Expenditure on Health Goods and Medical Services
2.11 Life Expectancy
Table 1 Life Expectancy at Birth 2000-2005
3. OTC HEALTHCARE SALES
3.1 Market Performance
Table 2 Retail Sales of OTC Healthcare by Sector: Value 2000-2005
Table 3 Retail Sales of OTC Healthcare by Sector: % Value Growth 2000-2005
3.2 Switches
3.3 Competitive Environment
Table 4 OTC Healthcare Company Shares by Retail Value 2001-2005
Table 5 OTC Healthcare Brand Shares by Retail Value 2002-2005
3.4 Leading Company Profile: Belupo lijekovi i kozmetika dd
Summary 1 Belupo lijekovi i kozmetika dd: Operational Indicators 2005
Summary 2 Belupo lijekovi i kozmetika dd: Production Statistics 2005
3.5 Leading Company Profile: Pliva dd
Summary 3 Pliva dd: Operational Indicators 2005
Table 6 Pliva dd: Earnings by Market 2005
3.6 New Product Developments
Summary 4 OTC Healthcare: New Product Launches 2004-2005
3.7 Retail Distribution
Table 7 Retail Sales of OTC Healthcare by Distribution Format: % Analysis 2000/2005
Table 8 Retail Sales of OTC Healthcare by Sector and Distribution Format: % Analysis 2005
3.8 Retailer Activity and Private Label Trends
3.9 Forecast Market Performance
Table 9 Forecast Retail Sales of OTC Healthcare by Sector: Value 2005-2010
Table 10 Forecast Retail Sales of OTC Healthcare by Sector: % Value Growth 2005-2010
4. DEFINITIONS