Walgreens

Originally, Walgreens stores were connected to local groceries. In Chicago, which is Walgreens primary market, they teamed up with either Eagle Food Centers or Dominick's Finer Foods, usually with a "walkthru" to the adjoining store and often sharing personnel. This concept was instated to compete with the popular dual store format used by chief competitor Jewel-Osco. Eventually, they ended the relationship with Eagle and focused primarily on a connection to the Dominick's stores, which were considered to be of a better quality. PharmX-Rexall stepped in and filled the vacated Walgreen locations joined to Eagle stores.

Walgreens is the second-largest retail pharmacy chain in the United States. The company’s mission is to be America’s most loved pharmacy-led health, wellbeing, and beauty retailer (Walgreens Mission, n.d.). Our purpose is to champion everyone’s right to be happy and healthy through the company slogan of “Corner of Happy and Healthy.” Our core focus is to improve the quality of life through our pharmacy services, Take-care clinics, and health and beauty products. These messages are widely broadcast through media such as television commercials, radio, and health and fitness magazines.

The board of directors and top executives won’t admit they are wrong, they didn’t think they will lose and after ESI told them what they want and Walgreens was still insisting that demands be met. They thought ESI was bluffing and after December 31st 2011, they dropped Walgreens from their network services.

From 2002 to 2005, Walgreens reported a compounded annual growth rate of 10.1%, growing to $42.2 billion in total revenues. This strong revenue growth was primary driven by organic expansion through new store openings. Since 2002, Walgreens has added 1070 net new stores (22% increase) while CVS has added 1,384 net new stores (25% increase), of which 86%, or 1200 of CVS' store additions, were due to the 2004 acquisition of Eckerd. As a result, although CVS reported an impressive 21% increase in sales from 2004 to 2005 compared to Walgreens 12.5% (a decline from 15.3% in 2003 to 2004), it was primarily due to CVS experiencing the full effect of the mid-2004 acquisition of the 1200 Eckerd stores. Table 3 shows the year-over-year comparison of Walgreens total revenues to CVS'.

Walgreens pharmacies are on the front lines of health care in America and serves as a centerpiece in improving patients’ overall health.

Walgreens was founded in 1901 and provides convenient access to consumer goods and services, pharmacy, health and wellness services (Walgreens.com). Walgreens has a conglomerate diversification business strategy which means they expand not only in pharmacy services but unrelated businesses such as health care clinics and in some areas Walgreens hosts 800 E.V. chargers. This type of business strategy helps to minimize risks due to fluctuations in one industry (Bateman, Snell 85). This type of corporate strategy is working very well for the Walgreens organization. The ability to service customer’s needs in a variety of needs is significant to a successful business. The Mission of Walgreens, “To be the most trusted, convenient

One major weakness of Walgreens is their store layouts. Each store is not uniform this can become confusing for many consumers. Some stores have 9 isles while others have 10 isles. While new stores have well experience layouts, in these layouts the pharmacists sit in front of the pharmacy at a desk there to assist any customers. All the different layouts can be confusing to consumers especially the elderly who make up a big portion of Walgreens customers. While having a store on each corner can be strength, this can lead to difficult parking situations for customers. I know personally, when I leave work I have to take a different way home then I do coming to work since it is hard to make a left hand turn out the one side of the parking lot. This can be difficult for customers who need to make a left hand turn to return back to their home. They do not want to go around town just to get back to their house. A lost insurance company contract caused Walgreens to lose many customers. The lost contract was with Express Scripts, this was seen negatively by many customers. Tricare, a military insurance was a part of Express Scripts. Walgreens gained a bad name with military members with the loss of this contract. Currently, Walgreens does take certain Express Script insurances they do not take Tricare. I personally think that Walgreens lacks when training customers. Employees are usually the last one to find out about anything that is going on in the company. Also, employees find it hard to answer all of the customers’ questions properly. The last weakness is the high prices at Walgreens. They do not have as many products in the store to spread out the expenses so this leads to higher prices. Also, with convenience comes a higher price. A store like Meijer has a lot of products to spread expenses over to keep costs low. With the strategic alliance with Amerisource Bergen, Walgreens will be able to improve

Walgreens operates 7,907 locations in 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico with over 247,000 employees serving customers. The company has seen an increase in revenues, but an end to its contract to participate in the Express Scripts pharmacy provider network on December 31, 2011 poses a threat to revenues and profits for 2012 and future fiscal periods. This analysis will discuss Walgreen’s business strategy, provide a current financial analysis of the company, risks associated with the company, address prospective analysis of Walgreens and provide a decision on future investments in the company stock.

There are many challenges that face Walgreens in the industry it operates. One is because of the hard financial status that many people are facing thus they are faced with the tough decision on whether to put food on their table or buy medication. This can be seen in the decline in pharmacy sales over the years ADDIN EN.CITE 19991499("Drug Watch," 1999)1499149917Drug WatchThe American Journal of NursingThe American Journal of Nursing1899101999Lippincott Williams & Wilkins0002936Xhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/3521900( HYPERLINK l "_ENREF_1" o ", 1999 #1499" "Drug Watch," 1999). Walgreens has, however, managed to keep their growth at double digits while facing the slump in growth numbers. The company has managed to do this by striving to offer their drug products at the best price possible as a result of its economies of scale and pricing policy.

Even though Walgreens is still only the second-largest health and wellness provider in America, behind CVS, the company is still very successful with over 8,300 stores that span across America, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. From 1906 when the drug store first opened it has come a long way, in 2009 they reached every state in America. They also became an investor when they spent 6.7 billion dollars for a 45% stake in the company Alliance, which was a boot company. Later on, in their investing career, they purchased a rival drugstore company Rite-Aid, a deal that was valued at 9.4 billion dollars. Owning this rival can be very helpful because they really can narrow down the customer’s choice of drugstore, almost like a monopoly. Overall

Anna Wilde Mathews and Jonathan Rockoff authored Megadeal Unites Drug Rivals in a published WSJ.com article of July 22, 2011. The article addresses the merger of two pharmacy benefits companies, Express Scripts Inc. and Medco Health Solutions Inc., along with the merger’s ramifications on the health care industry. This strategic merger is expected to impact the pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) market in conjunction with influencing drug costs and channels and possibly raising anti-trust concerns.

Today I made a visit to Walgreens #4319. I was greeted by the store manager, Oscar Rios. He told me that all is well, and the participants are doing a great job. He also informed me that participant, Islam, no longer reports to work. The store was kept clean and hazard free. The participants were scheduled to work later in the evenings. Overall, management follows DYCD rules and regulations appropriately.

JCPenney Company, Inc., a public traded company that has its common stocks traded on NYSE market under the ticker symbol “JCP”.

There are many factors that impact Walgreens. Previously, Walgreens only had to worry about economic and political environment of the United States. Since the merger, they now have to worry about the environment of the United States and Europe. This is also the same with trends. What is popular in the United States does not mean it will be popular overseas. “The stock declined 14 percent to $59.21 at the close in New York, the biggest single-day fall since October 2007. Walgreen, which considered redomiciling overseas to lower its tax rate, has come under political pressure not to do a so-called tax inversion” (Koons, 2014, para. 2-3). Walgreens original plan was to purchase Boots Alliance then move their headquarters overseas for a lowered

Invest in technology to improve health services delivery, online retailing and cut redundancies in day to day activities of pharmacists. Better designed software would be able to keep track of customer preferences and past records. A lot of mechanical work one by pharmacists could be automated therefore freeing up pharmacists to focus more on customers. Despite being a specialty pharmacy, Walgreen ventured into grocery items and general merchandise to improve the bottom-line. Integrating all categories into software would enable better warehouse management and help keep inventories at a bare minimum, thereby lowering