Top Retailers

Target touts pharmacists’ expertise
Target is encouraging customers to direct their sights toward its in-store pharmacies with its “Ask Us” campaign. The campaign includes signage located throughout the store designed to direct shoppers to seek information from pharmacists about everything from allergies to generic discounts, promoting Target’s pharmacists as experts on medicines. 

The signage includes floor graphics in the aisles leading to the pharmacy counter, signs hanging from ceilings and placards posted on endcaps.  
Walmart gets back in on the action
Action Alley — branded feature displays and four-sided fixtures in the main aisles — marked its return to all Walmart stores this past holiday season, and signified Walmart’s return to promotional intensity.

CVS aims for growth behind new leader

With a new leader at the helm, a robust management team in place and an unwavering focus on driving medication adherence and reducing healthcare costs, CVS Caremark remains squarely on the growth path and continues to play an increasingly important role in U.S. health care with its far-reaching store network and arsenal of products and services. 
CVS clusters convenience, fresh in Urban concept

 CVS provided a healthy dose of convenience to urban dwellers with the opening of its Urban Cluster store concept late last year. The stores have a decidedly unique bend, being stocked with a broad range of consumables, including an expanded pantry offering and a selection of affordable wines priced under $7. 
WAG monitors diabetes meter sales

Comparison shopping across blood-glucose meters couldn’t be easier than at Walgreens. Pictured here at a store just outside of Baltimore, customers can hold and feel the individual monitors and review individual bullet points as part of this pull-box display. Located just outside the pharmacy waiting area, the display also is ideal for quick and easy pharmacist recommendations.  
Resilient Kroger readies for recovery

In retailing, it’s a given that a long-term, severe recession will cut through the ranks of food, drug and general merchandise retailers like a scythe through wheat, pushing weaker players out of the market as consumer spending dries up and Darwinian realities winnow the field. But it’s also true that the strongest merchants can emerge not only intact, but also with even brighter prospects if they innovate, invest and retain the loyalty of their customers. 
Logos are in the eye of the beholder

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT — Another story this week is a reminder of how important even the most subtle finesses of a corporate logo can be in the minds of the consumer.

(THE NEWS: Wegmans leaves 'circle W' to Walgreens. For the full story, click here)
Wegmans leaves 'circle W' to Walgreens

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Wegmans Food Markets and Walgreens have agreed to settle the lawsuit commenced by Walgreens in November 2010 in which the drug store chain claimed that certain Wegmans logos infringed Walgreens trademarks, the supermarket chain announced Friday.
Montini's promotion will help move Rite Aid in right direction

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT — Newly promoted Rite Aid EVP merchandising Tony Montini isn’t new to the company, having served brief stints there in the late 1980s and early 2000s. But the retailer’s latest initiatives, and the leading roles that Montini and SVP merchandising Bryan Shirtliff will take in them, are the kinds of things that will let the two really leave their mark on the company — and on the industry.
California Rite Aid stores offer discounted whooping cough vaccinations

CAMP HILL, Pa. — Rite Aid is selling whooping cough vaccines to parents in California at a reduced price, the retailer said Thursday.

As of July 1, a new state law will require proof of vaccination for all students entering grades 7 through 12, and nearly all of the retail pharmacy chain’s 600 stores in California will be able to vaccinate walk-in patients or by appointment. The reduced-price vaccine will sell for $57.99.