In this Issue

The 2011 NACDS Marketplace Conference will take place in Boston, June 25 to 28. More than 230 retail companies — representing more than $500 billion in annual buying power — and more than 90% of the consumer packaged goods industry is expected to attend. To learn more, Drug Store News talked with NACDS SVP member programs and services Jim Whitman and NACDS director of conference exhibits and registration Roy McGrath.

DSN: Why is Marketplace more important than ever? What’s new this year?

DEERFIELD, Ill. — Walgreens in March expanded Joseph Magnacca’s role. As president of daily living products and solutions, Magnacca — the former Shoppers Drug Mart vet who as chief merchant of Duane Reade proved instrumental in the reinvention of the New York drug store chain — will oversee Walgreens’ marketing and merchandising operations, led by chief marketing officer Kim Feil and chief merchandising officer Bryan Pugh, but will report directly to president and CEO Greg Wasson.

Sugar and chalk. That’s what Pfizer researchers found in a pill that was supposed to be Cytotec, but was, in fact, a crude knockoff seized from a counterfeit drug lab in Peru.

Weis Markets streamlined its internal connection between wellness and pharmacy earlier this year with an organizational restructuring that folded the Weis Lifestyle Initiatives department, led by registered dietitian Karen Buch, into the grocer’s pharmacy division. It is the first official move by a supermarket retailer to literally draw a direct line between food and pharmacy.

One supermarket operator is literally driving customers to its pharmacies.

Customers at Royal Ahold’s Giant-Landover stores can earn one Gas Rewards point for every dollar spent on purchases in Giant pharmacies in Maryland, most of Virginia, Delaware and Washington, D.C. With the program, for example, a $20 pharmaceutical co-pay earns 20 points and a $50 pharmacy purchase earns 50 points. For every 100 Gas Rewards points earned, shoppers save 10 cents off every gallon of gas bought at Giant and participating Shell gas stations.

One chain that exemplifies experimentation and innovation in health-and-wellness programs is Harmons, which operates 13 stores in the Salt Lake City area.

In 1999, the family-owned company unveiled Healthy Living Solutions. Originally a store-within-a-store concept, the department featured natural and organic products, with the pharmacy manager in charge of the department.

Few supermarkets make health and wellness as central to their business as Hy-Vee, a West Des Moines, Iowa-based chain.

In December 2010, the chain announced it would become one of a number of retailers — including Kroger and Safeway — to participate in Pharmacy Saver, a new program offered in collaboration with UnitedHealthcare, the country’s largest Medicare Part D insurer. The program was launched, in part, as a response to the Humana Walmart-Preferred Rx Plan, launched in late September 2010.

Publix routinely makes strategic moves to enhance the customer experience in the pharmacy and health-and-wellness arena that are rooted in the customer service mindset that has made its supermarkets so popular.

Last fall the company introduced a new larger, triangular-shaped pill bottle that is designed to be easier to open. While the pill bottle redesign didn’t go as far as the award-winning program Target introduced a few years back, the move underscored the fact that Publix is a pharmacy innovator.