In a multipart series throughout 2014, our team is examining key product attributes and marketing tactics from two different perspectives: the retail buyer and the consumer/shopper. This objective picture of the two viewpoints should contribute to a product’s success at retail.
Recently, Walmart announced it would open a dozen Walmart Care Clinics, primary care medical facilities, in stores in under-served communities.
The three most influential health care retailers in America are drug chains. They are, in no particular order, Walgreens, CVS Health and Rite Aid. In a sense, this is a surprise. Over the past several years, every major mass retailer in the U.S. has put an emphasis on health care.
The nation’s health care system is in upheaval, with, to borrow a phrase from William Wordsworth, “the meagre, stale, forbidding ways of custom” under siege.
In a year crammed with major news stories, cataclysmic personnel shifts and stunning new strategies and directions, the No. 1 retailing story of 2014 increasingly appears to be the CVS decision, announced early this year, to stop selling tobacco products in its 7,700 drug stores.
October 1 is the first anniversary of the debut of the federal and state health care exchanges that allow Americans to assess insurance options and purchase coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Since then 7.3 million people have signed up, and another 4.
When President Ronald Reagan signed the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act 30 years ago, few could imagine how the law would transform the health care landscape.
Are we seeing the first early “green shoots” of a new industry disruptor? Possibly. Big Pharma has started experimenting with direct-to-consumer models to fill prescriptions, effectively circumventing the retail pharmacy.
In the aftermath of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores-sponsored Total Store Expo exhibit show and business conference, held in Boston late last month, one long-held view was fortified by both the retailer and supplier communities: Business at retail is in the doldrums.
The change in name of CVS Caremark to CVS Health marks the culmination of a transition almost a quarter century in the making. Just 25 years ago CVS was one of several regional drug chains with a strong presence in a relatively limited geographic area.
It’s not that Mark Cosby, the departing president of the CVS drug chain, was not respected. After all, here was an executive with an extensive retailing background, most notably at Sears and Macy’s. The drawback was that Cosby was not a chain drug retailer.
While the new regulations governing pharmacy compounding contained in the Drug Quality and Security Act, which received final congressional approval and was signed into law by President Obama last month, garnered most of the media attention, the bigger story is the provisions of the legislation givi
he began working for the Deerfield, Ill.-based, 8,100-store drug chain in 1970, when Walgreens, then located on Peterson Avenue in northern Chicago, operated some 550 drug stores — Steve Lubin has accepted a retirement package, leaving the company he has been so large a part of for so
Much has been written in this space about the lift the Affordable Care Act will provide for the retail pharmacy business.
Should companies consider data an asset? Recognizing the value of translating big data into something meaningful that informs product, marketing, customer service, distribution, sales, and operations decisions has been a hot topic this year.
The disappearance of Kerr Drug, one of America’s elite regional drug chains, has yet to be felt. But with Walgreens closing its acquisition of the 76-store, Raleigh, N.C.
