Will Cialis and Levitra Sell Online?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Now that Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) has started to sell Viagra online at Viagra.com, can Cialis.com and Levitra.com be far behind? These two other drugs face the same black market trouble Viagra does. Pfizer claims the black market costs it hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and the problem being industrywide means that the industry quickly will share Pfizer’s model.

Under Pfizer’s new system, men armed with a prescription can order their drugs, have the order filed at CVS Caremark Corp. (NYSE: CVS) and then mailed. Pfizer describes the benefits of the system this way:

CONVENIENCE AND PRIVACY of ordering from your home with FREE shipping in the continental U.S.

CONFIDENCE in knowing that your order is being handled by trusted pharmacists and that your information is secure.

SAVINGS AND OFFERS found on VIAGRA.com that can also be redeemed at your local pharmacy or preferred online pharmacy with a valid prescription for VIAGRA.

Cialis and Levitra can, and probably have to, match the initiative immediately. Through programs for the three, online erectile dysfunction products can follow a system pioneered by companies such as Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) in which consumers can buy everything from books to consumer electronics to clothing. Perhaps the three drugs should have joined these other products years ago. It could have blunted the rise of the black market and made the sales of them easier for the consumer, a benefit that other categories of products discovered years ago.

The marketers at Cialis maker Eli Lilly & Co. (NYSE: LLY) and Levitra maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC (NYSE: GSK) are too intelligent and aggressive to allow Pfizer’s plan go unchallenged for too long.

All the men who were embarrassed about their erectile problems can now sneak on to the Internet, get their pills delivered to their homes, and, by the way, get three free pills in the process.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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