Pharmacy Technician Study Guide
'Dispensers of wellness' concept is Rx cornerstone - Pharmacy's Top Players - Giant Eagle is positioning in-store pharmacies as "the neighborhood dispensers of wellness" in a new television commercial Giant Eagle is positioning its in-store pharmacies as "the neighborhood dispensers of wellness" in a new television commercial.
The spot, which was launched in mid-May, is part of a campaign that seeks to promote the chain's high standards of customer service, with individual ads highlighting the pharmacy along with the meat, bakery and produce departments.
"Our pharmacists are presented as 'dispensers of wellness' in the local communities," Randy Heiser, vice president of pharmacy, explained, "with the commercials conveying the idea that we hire and retain the most knowledgeable, friendly people in the industry to staff our pharmacies so we can provide the best quality service."
Giant Eagle operates 214 supermarket in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland, encompassing 131 corporate stores and 83 independently owned stores, all of which operate under the Giant Eagle banner. It offers pharmacies at 167 locations.
Heiser said pharmacy sales are growing at a rate of 15 percent to 20 percent a year, with the department accounting for approximately 15 percent of Giant Eagle's sales of $4.6 billion in 2002.
According to Heiser, pharmacy offerings include flu clinics, wellness screenings for osteoporosis, glucose and cholesterol, plus a variety of senior-specific health programs. Over the next 12 months, the chain plans to offer more than 250 wellness screenings at the 55 Giant Eagle stores in its Cleveland division "to bring those programs to customers in our newer marketing area," he said.
Giant Eagle seeks to stimulate pharmacy sales by using information from the chain's Advantage Cards to study customer purchase histories, "and we target pharmacy trial offers to those customers," Heiser said. For example, it incentivizes customers to move their prescriptions to the chain by offering gift cards ranging from $10 to $25, he explained, and it also seeks to reward pharmacy customers with special health and beauty care offers, he added.
Most Giant Eagle pharmacies are located in the center of the store, adjacent to HBC. However, the company has been experimenting the past year with a new store design that relocates the pharmacy to a perimeter wall, along with HBC, to accommodate race-to-face interaction for drive-through service, Heiser said.
After testing the new design at five stores, Giant Eagle has determined that all new stores that can accommodate the design will have the pharmacy on an exterior wall, he said. Giant Eagle currently has drive-through windows at 30 stores.
Heiser declined to indicate what sort of expansion plans Giant Eagle has for pharmacies over the next 12 months to 18 months. We continuously examine opportunities for strategic growth, and those efforts may include growth in pharmacies, but we have nothing official to disclose at this time," he said.
One of Giant Eagle's biggest challenges, Heiser said, is maintaining bottom-line net profits in an environment of decreasing gross profits, and because most customers have some form of insurance coverage, "Our strategy is to continue to emphasize customer service to differentiate ourselves from the competition. Providing an optimal level of service to our customers is our main focus."
In its use of technology, "We are constantly examining new tools to help us operate more efficiently by increasing our levels of customer service while decreasing our costs," Heiser said. The chain has operated a central refill facility for almost three years, and it plans to roll out a central adjudication processing center in September, he noted--one of only a handful of supermarket operators with such a facility, which is designed to improve communications between the stores and insurance companies, Heiser said.
Giant Eagle recently initiated an internal technician certification program that will allow technicians to get more involved with data entry work and contacts with insurance companies "to allow the pharmacists to spend more time with customers," Heiser said.
19. GIANT EAGLE AT A GLANCE
2002 2001 2002 % of No. of stores ** % of stores
Rx sales * Rx sales * total sales with pharmacies with pharmacies
$660 $613 15% 166 78%
Source: Chain Store Guide/Drug Store News * Sales in millions
** As of April 2003
COPYRIGHT 2003 Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
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