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IRI and the Boston Consulting Group identified five trends exploited by the consumer packaged goods winners in their latest growth leaders report. According to the report, the best CPG companies successfully merged health and wellness with convenience, benefitted from the tailwinds driving growth across the convenience channel, capitalized on mergers and acquisitions to accelerate growth, tapped into ethnic flavor trends and leveraged their social media outreach.

Merging heath and wellness with convenience

In an effort to better understand the workflow dynamics between buyers and sellers and the common pitfalls and opportunities inherent to the buying process, ECRM recently conducted an online study of more than 5,000 retailers and vendors, over a two-week period.

While it was encouraging to find that, in general, there is good alignment between retailers and suppliers, the findings suggest that plenty of room still exists for the relationship to improve. 

What follows are the top seven takeaways from the research.

OLYMPIA, Wash. — The retail pharmacy industry is pursuing legal action against Washington state over a “substantively and procedurally flawed” rule  that would pay pharmacies below the actual cost to dispense Medicaid prescriptions.

The National Association of Chain Drug Stores joined the Washington State Pharmacy Association and the National Community Pharmacists Association in preventing a rule that would jeopardize patient access to their medications, the associations said.

Genoa, a QoL healthcare company, has put mental health care at the center of its business model — almost all of its 357 locations are located within community mental health centers in 42 states and the District of Columbia, and its telepsychiatry services serve 24 states. In a recent study published by the Journal of Managed Care Pharmacy, patients who had their prescriptions filled at a Genoa on-site pharmacy on-site at their community mental health center had adherence rates of 96%, with a 40 % lower rate of behavioral health related hospitalizations than the control group.

We’ve heard a lot lately about fake news. Much of the talk is about false and deceptive stories invading the Internet and other platforms.

There’s another phenomenon that I call “almost-fake,” which also relates to news and information, specifically about health. In many ways it’s even more challenging, especially for health practitioners and retailers.

I define almost-fake as health information that isn’t based on science.

“Sales reps prioritize a sales agenda over solving a customer’s problem. If organizations don’t change, 1 million business-to-business salespeople will lose their jobs to self-service e-commerce by 2020.”
—Forester Research

Drug Store News this summer spoke to three Good Neighbor Pharmacy owners as part of its coverage of AmerisourceBergen ThoughtSpot 2016. In these exclusive interviews, independent pharmacists shared changes implemented in their pharmacy to expand patient care and increase front-end profitability, the importance of customer service and the role of the independent pharmacist in the community.

Above: Paul Satterfield, Business Coach – Retail for AmerisourceBergen Drug Corp., led two continuing education sessions at Good Neighbor Pharmacy ThoughtSpot 2016: “A Brave New World – of Profit: Turning your Front End from a Convenience Center into a Profit Center,” which he taught alongside fellow Business Coach Danny Nelson, and “Embrace Your Full Potential as a Pharmacy Staff Member: YOU are the Cornerstone of the Patient Experience!”