And if you don't like it you can go somewhere else!
"Walgreens opts for new strategy based on beauty" by Cynthia Koons and Danielle Burger Bloomberg News June 12, 2015
Walgreens Boots Alliance has been losing American customers for the better part of the past three years. So a new, largely European management team is giving the largest US drugstore chain a fresh face.
The company is redoing its stores with what’s meant to be a more appealing cosmetics area with a wider array of products, even as it scales back its fresh food offering. Most prominent will be the company’s own Boots No7 skincare line, which has proved successful at drawing customers to stores in Europe.
It’s all part of a plan to make Walgreens stores the destination of choice for health-conscious women who make the bulk of purchasing decisions for their families. The early results have been encouraging for the company: In Phoenix, a test market for Boots products, customers are making more repeat purchases and spending more money each time they enter the store. And Boots No7 has become the city’s top-selling beauty brand for Walgreens.
‘‘That’s what our strategy is, to get our customers to see us slightly differently,’’ said Alex Gourlay, executive vice president of Walgreens Boots Alliance and president of its Walgreen Co. unit. ‘‘How do we create the image that then stops them in the store and says, ‘Whoa, I don’t have to go to Macy’s?’ ’’
The company will have to overcome the hurdles that tripped up rival CVS Health, which shut down a beauty-focused initiative after failing to get high-end cosmetics brands to stock its shelves. It will also have to contend with skepticism from consumers accustomed to going to the department store to buy top-tier skincare products.
‘‘If I come here, the quality isn’t as good and I can’t be sure that the products will match my skin,’’ said Nonye Enogwe, 22, a shopper at a Manhattan location of Duane Reade, a Walgreens-owned drugstore.
Walgreens’ beautification project was set into motion by the company’s $15.3 billion buyout of Alliance Boots last year, the consummation of a two-stage deal by the US drugstore chain that saw Alliance Boots executives fill the majority of the top jobs in the merged company.
The US business represents almost four-fifths of the combined company’s sales.
Investors are optimistic about the new strategy. Shares of Deerfield, Ill.-based Walgreens are up 12 percent this year.
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Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't notice how you looked.
UPDATES:
"CVS’s new digital innovation lab aims to engage local startups" by Scott Kirsner, Globe Correspondent, 06/18/2015
CVS Health Corp. is expanding its already big footprint this week. On Monday, the drugstore behemoth said it would acquire Target’s 1,600 in-store pharmacies for $1.9 billion. And on Thursday, the Rhode Island company is cutting the ribbon on a satellite office in Boston’s Back Bay that’s focused on digital innovation.
Brian Tilzer, a former Staples e-commerce exec who has been chief digital officer at CVS since 2013, said about 15 of them were already CVS Health employees who are helping to open the Boston facility and will be “integrating things back into the mother ship.” The lab will eventually employ about 100, Tilzer said. He lives in Boston’s western suburbs and plans to spend a chunk of his time there.
The lab focuses on what Tilzer calls “connected health innovations,” like exploring ways that intelligent pill bottles could remind us to take our daily meds, Internet-linked blood pressure monitors might track data for hypertensives, and cellphone-linked otoscopes could diagnose ear infections in infants more quickly.
One wall of the lab displays a collection of devices — both prototypes and some already on the market.
A big question for the Boston team, said Andrew Macey, vice president of digital strategy and innovation, is “once all the data comes in from these devices — then what?” He said the lab is interested in exploring how all that biometric data could be combined with the right incentives to help people stay healthy, especially if they’re managing chronic conditions like diabetes or multiple sclerosis....
As if they truly cared about your health. If they did they would lower their prices! Consumer value my a$$!
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Also see: CVS launches makeovers at many stores
Like lipstick on a pig (with all due respect and apologies to pigs).
