To meet the needs of its patients and customers, Walgreens is accelerating its "plan to win" through its three core strategies: Leveraging the "best store network in America"; enhancing the customer experience; and achieving major cost reduction and productivity gains.
With more than 7,600 drugstores "already located on [image-nocss] the best corners across the country," Walgreens has strengthened its store network with more drugstore acquisitions in the last two years than at any time in its history. As a result, the company has top-two drugstore market share in 226 metropolitan areas including the nation's largest drugstore market, New York City.
"A store base like ours doesn't happen overnight. It has been decades in the making," said Mark Wagner, Walgreens president of community management. "With nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population living within three miles of a Walgreens, we are truly 'My Walgreens' to millions of Americans, their first choice for health and daily living needs."
Walgreens president and CEO Greg Wasson said, "As patients gain greater access to health care information and take more responsibility for making health care decisions, they are increasingly becoming shoppers of health care," said Walgreens president and CEO Greg Wasson. "That's why we're evolving from a retail drugstore to a retail health and daily living store, putting us squarely at the intersection of two great industriesretail and health care."
He added, "No one is better positioned to execute this strategy, as every day we provide nearly six million people with convenient access to health and daily living goods and services in communities across the country. Two years into one of the greatest strategic and operational transformations in our history, Walgreens is laser-focused on executing the key initiatives that will bring our strategy to life while creating shareholder value."
To achieve its strategy of achieving major cost reduction and productivity gain, Walgreens Rewiring for Growth initiative is on track to meet its goal of $1 billion in savings in fiscal 2011, the company said. "Just as important, we are embedding continuous process improvement and innovation into the fabric of our company," said Wade Miquelon, Walgreens executive vice president and CFO.
Walgreens has slowed the pace of new store openings from 9% growth in 2008 to 4.2% in 2010. Going forward, the company expects growth of between 2.5% and 3% in fiscal 2011, which will still result in more store openings than any of its drugstore competitors.
Since launching its Customer Centric Retailing initiative in 2008, the company will have converted more than 2,000 stores to the format by the end of calendar 2010 and plans to finish the rollout of a total of 5,500 stores by the end of calendar 2011.
The company is also fine-tuning its merchandising and expanding its line of private-brand products.
Deerfield, Ill.-based Walgreens is the nation's largest drugstore chain with fiscal 2010 sales of $67 billion. The company operates 7,608 drugstores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
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