Walgreen Corporation, incorporated in 1901, is a pharmacy retail chain company and through various acquisitions, the company grew into the largest one in the United States. For more than 100 years, Walgreen has seen constant level of growth.
Walgreen is considered the industry leader, servicing 30.8% of the customer in the whole industry. Additionally, the company has more than 83,000 stores and 251,000 employees. The company offers its customers a wide variety of merchandise products other than prescription and non-proscription drugs, such as household products, food and beverage, and cosmetics. Walgreen also provides many convenience services, such as their photo center, mail pharmacy services, and health services.
As the era keeps moving forward, this company continues to obtain leads in the industry. It changes with the era and keeps coming up with new market strategies to succeed. As more and more people want to do good things for the society and give back to community around them, Walgreen is also vigorous about its Cooperate Social Responsibility. Whether they are offering free flu shoots or contributing to the community development, the company is constantly working to accomplish their mission.
To prepare for the greater challenge, Walgreen has taken a huge step by purchasing 45% stake in the alliance Boots, which is a pharmacy led healthy and beauty store across Europe. It is a stepping-stone for Walgreen to be the lead of worldwide pharmacy retail stores. To
Walgreen Co. (Walgreens) and its subsidiaries operate a drugstore chain in the United States. “The Company provides its customers with multichannel access to consumer goods and services, and pharmacy, health and wellness services in communities across America” (Walgreen Company). The firm currently operates two mail-order facilities and has 7,752 retail drug stores located across all 50 US states, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia (Walgreens). Prescription drugs account
The Walgreens chain began in 1901, with a drug store on the corner of Bowen Ave and Cottage Grove, Chicago, Illinois, United States owned by Galesburg native Charles R. Walgreen, Sr.[6] By 1915, there were five Walgreen drugstores. He added several improvements to the stores such as soda fountains and luncheon service. He also began to make his own line of drug products and was then able to control the quality of the items and sell them at lower prices. By 1916, 19 stores were in operation, all in Chicago. And in that same year, all the stores were consolidated under Walgreen Co. The 1920s was a very successful decade for Walgreens. In 1921, the company opened stores
Walgreens is one of the fortune 500 companies and among the fastest growing retailers in the country. Walgreens as of April 30 operated 8307 location in all 50 states including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam. This includes 7855 drugstores, 146 more than a year ago, including 21 stores acquired over the last 12 month
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'.
Established in 1901, Walgreen objective was to develop a reputation for themselves as the consumer first choice for health and everyday living around the world. Walgreen Co. has nearly 8,100 retail pharmacies, making it the largest pharmacy chain by number of stores worldwide. They wanted to be located in a central part of people’s lives and in the communities where they work and live. Walgreen delivers the most convenient, multi-channel access to goods, services, and pharmacy, health and beauty services while emerging a new customer experience.
Walgreens was founded in 1901 measuring 50 feet by 20 feet by Charles R. Walgreen, Sr.. Mr. Walgreen was born near Galesburg, Illinois and his family later relocated to Dixon, Illinois at town about 60 miles north of his birthplace. Mr. Walgreens’ father was a farmer who turned into a businessperson and saw a great potential of the Rock River Valley (Walgreen, n.d., p.1). At age 16, Charles Walgreen had his first experience working in a drug store. He didn’t always have pleasurable experiences but it was a job with pay. He had an accident at a shoe factory that cut off his left middle finger from the top joint. This injury also stops him from playing any sports at school. After a year and a half with the
At present Walgreens appears to be operating in a Horizontal Integration strategy demonstrated through its merger with Boots Alliance and a reported inquiry to purchase Rite-Aid. (Nichols, 2015) Market Penetration is another strategy which Walgreens is presently operating within. Their change in strategy to focus on the customer and improve customer service and relationships is one strategy that is being used to penetrate a market with vast competition that needs a differentiator to remain on top.
Walgreens’ principal activity is to operate a chain of retail drugstores that sells prescription and nonprescription drugs. The company also carries additional product lines like general merchandise including cosmetics, food, beverages and photofinishing. Walgreens is one of the fastest growing retailers in the United States and led the chain drugstore industry in retail sales and profits last year.
Knowing the importance of a strategic vision, every company undertakes a complete analysis periodically. In order to create a strategic plan the parties involved must know every aspect of the industry and the company at hand. The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the retail drugstore industry and then focus on Walgreens, the industry leader in terms of sales. As part of the in-depth analysis of Walgreens, its major competitors will also be described and analyzed. The retail drugstore industry consists of all those stores that contain a pharmacy and sell prescription drugs. It also includes businesses that sell prescription drugs online and through the mail. Most retail drugstores also offer other
Walgreens is the more established and older of the two companies. It was founded in 1901 and until recently it added stores from mostly internal organic growth. CVS is the newer company and started in 1963. The majority of growth at CVS has come from acquisitions of other companies like Revco, Arbor Drug, Eckerd and more recently Sav-On and Osco
Strengths. As of 2008, Walgreen operated 6,934 stores in the U.S. and U.S. held territories, making it the largest retail chain pharmacy in North America (DataMonitor, 2010, p. 22). Walgreen’s recent acquisition of Duane-Reade, a prominent
Although not explicitly stated in any of the research I found, I believe Walgreens views its IT professionals as essential to driving the strategy and mission of the company. Since the company relies heavily on its e-commerce functions such as online sales and online prescriptions
Founded in 1901 in Illinois by Charles R. Walgreen, Sr., Walgreens was a subsidiary of Walgreens Boots Alliance. In the most recent years, Walgreen’s corporate strategy has been focused on mergers and acquisitions, the first of which occurred in 2014 when Walgreens purchased the remaining stake in Boots costing the company approximately $15.3 billion. (Walgreens, n.d.) With this acquisition Walgreens became the largest pharmacy/health/beauty combination retailer in the world, operating in all 50 states and 12 countries internationally. (Schauber, 2014)
We would like to thank you so much for all the hard work that you all have been doing. As Walgreens still continue being one of the top largest retail pharmacy in the United States. Our goal and vision has always been; to be America's most loved pharmacy-led health, wellbeing and beauty retailer and to champion everyone’s right to be happy and healthy and that also include our employees. With that being said we really appreciate your loyalty and the excellent work that you continue to do despite our current predicament.