The new year has begun inauspiciously for chain drug retailing, an industry that is still trying to assess the results of the just completed Christmas selling season. By all accounts, December was a month of no great accomplishments, even if it was not the disaster some observers predicted. Now it’s on to 2016, and the
Christmas is over, yesterday’s news. And the mass retailing community is scampering to assess its impact on sales, earnings and the future. For chain drug retailers, this holiday selling season, like so many before it, was acceptable, if hardly record-setting. As in previous years, America’s drug chains suffered from an absence of exciting new products
The National Association of Chain Drug Stores held its year-end meetings in New York City early this month — and very little was as it had been a year ago. Many of the same familiar faces were on hand, and several of the same retail companies attended. But the yearlong series of events that have
Black Friday is here — again. But the current promotion bears little resemblance to the event that, apparently eons ago, ushered in the Christmas selling season by offering shoppers, for a limited time on the day following Thanksgiving, holiday specials that lured customers into all manner of stores. Black Friday today appears to linger for
Reaction to Walmart’s announcement in mid-October that the retailer’s sales and earnings would suffer as a result of its heightened commitment to its employees, its stores and its online presence dwarfed any negativity the company had experienced in nearly two decades. The retailer’s stock plunged — and the rub-off impacted the entire retail community. Indeed,
As the year 2015 winds down, the chain drug community must face the reality that the coming year will be unlike any that has preceded it. The same drug chains still rule the U.S. landscape. But the content of their character and the face of the people who guide them are vastly different than in
The ranks of the founding families, the leaders who collectively framed and built the chain drug store business in America, are thinning at an alarming rate. Sad as this development is, sadder still is the reality that very few among the current crop of chain drug industry leaders remember who they were or what they
Summer’s nearly over. The holiday selling season is a few small steps away. The back-to-school selling season is over. Halloween is here. Thanksgiving is a moment away. What happened? Where has 2015 gone? What has it meant for mass retailing? More urgently, Total Store Expo, the mammoth merchandising exhibition assembled by the National Association of
Chain Drug Review’s sister publication, MMR, annually publishes a study of the 100 largest grocery, drug and discount store markets, ranking the markets in descending order by the market share of the leading retailers. This year’s study is included in MMR’s latest issue, dated August 17. Two of the categories, drug stores and discount stores,
The third annual Total Store Expo, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores’ exhibit event that has replaced the association’s Marketplace Conference as mass retailing’s signature merchandising event, is about to kick off in Denver. Advance notices promise a program every bit as varied, engaging and productive as the initial Total Store Expo, which unfolded
CVS’ announced intention to buy Target’s pharmacy and immediate care clinic businesses has stunned a mass retailing community already subject to numerous shocks this year. To recap briefly, mass retailing has seen new alliances, new executive appointments and promotions, bold new ventures, and a newly revised view of the mass retailing community based on a
Retailing is making headlines in the consumer press these days — the wrong kind of headlines. Some samples include the following: • CVS is being accused of targeting African-American and Hispanic shoppers as more likely to cause trouble than are Caucasian customers. • Walmart has reluctantly agreed to lower the temperature — by one degree
The fiscal first quarter of 2015 is in the books for many of the largest retailers, and the results tend to bear out the idea that the current year will be one of struggle and uncertainty despite signs that the economy is rebounding from the recession that plagued it so sorely in recent years. The
Less than a month has passed since the National Association of Chain Drug Stores hosted its 2015 Annual Meeting in Palm Beach, Fla. By all accounts, the event was hugely productive, as retailer and supplier attendees from around the country and throughout the industry journeyed to South Florida in the most optimistic mood the chain drug
