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
The NACDS Annual Meeting, unfolding at the moment in Palm Beach, Fla., unofficially marks the end of the first third of the mass retailing year. Perhaps coincidently, the NACDS Total Store Expo event, scheduled for August 22 to August 25 in Denver, unofficially signals the end of the second third of this mass retailing year.
The National Association of Chain Drug Stores just hosted its seventh annual RxImpact Day in Washington, a gathering of chain drug store people with the object of meeting with the nation’s lawmakers to remind them that pharmacy is a front-line health care option. And, like the six preceding RxImpact Days, it was a huge success.
Target is officially in the convenience store business. Earlier this month the Minneapolis-based mass merchant opened two slimmed-down stores in the San Francisco Bay area. The first opened in downtown San Francisco, the second across the Bay in the college town of Berkeley. These units are the second and third “Express” stores Target has opened
The most stunning aspect of the recently held NACDS Regional Chain Conference, convened on the west coast of Florida on February 1, was the absence of many of the industry veterans around whom the conference revolved in years past. Tony Civello, until recently the head of Kerr Drug, was absent, having sold his drug chain
A small group of chain drug industry veterans met recently in Cleveland to discuss the lamentable state of innovative and creative merchandising in chain drug retailing these days. The group, consisting of some dozen retailers, suppliers and association executives, concluded that a variety of factors — most notably industry consolidation and the tendency among retailers
The cataclysmic changes within the chain drug retailing community, whatever their ultimate implications for America’s largest drug chains and for the industry in general, are putting the country’s regional drug chains more glaringly in the spotlight. Indeed, not only are America’s smaller drug chains more professionally managed and operated than they have yet been, they
Which events were most significant for chain drug retailing in 2014? As usual, that is not an easy question to answer. In many ways, 2014 was a remarkable year for the chain drug industry, one in which the character of the business was changed, probably irrevocably. The industry assumed a global character for perhaps the