"Walgreen's Take Care Clinic”



Executive Summary

This paper is about the Walgreen Co. Take Care clinic. The company is engaged in retail Pharmacy store operations and retail clinic operations. This paper evaluates the advantages of extending hours of clinic to match the pharmacy hours. The problem is that, whether the customer will take advantage of the extended hours or will it just result in increasing costs. The businesses have to be seen in their broader environment perspective to predict the future and future needs of the company. The country analysis is done through PESTLE, which stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technological, environmental and legal. The industrial analysis is done with reports from IBIS World. Marketline is used for obtaining the data regarding the Walgreen Co along with its official website. The information is compiled and analyzed at different levels to find out the trends of future and needs. In this way, the suitability of extended hours can be analyzed.

Walgreen is one of the largest retail pharmacy chain operators in the United States of America. Fact is that 75% of the US population lives in just five miles from Walgreens stores chain. The established drug retail chain provides an opportunity to Walgreen to penetrate the market. The wide variety of products and services diversify its portfolio. However, the company has been allegedly involved in various illegal advertising, and unprofessional conduct. Walgreen Co. had to recall its private label brand had to be recalled because of an error in packaging. Errors and mistakes like these can tax the image of the company.

In the USA, retail clinics setup is gaining popularity at phenomenal rates. These clinics are walk-in clinics. Industry estimates even indicate that, usage of retail clinics has increased ten folds during the period 2007-2009. Threats to the company include, labor cost, which is increasing in US and Retail industry is labor intensive. Walgreen is engaged in high completion with its rivals.

United States is the largest country with respect to its expenditures in the health. It expended an almost 16% of its GDP in the year 2010.one trend is visible form the macro statistics. The expenditures required for health care are rising and are much higher countries as compared to developing countries. The statistics from Centers for Disease Control (CDC) indicates that, in the year 2008 the private health insurance paid for 35.4% of the health spending, Medicaid 16.2% and Medicare for 22.7% (CDC, 2010).

The Obama administration has taken some serious steps in overhauling the health care system in United States. The president has taken it as a major challenge and presented Patient Protection and Affordable Care act. In this way, more patients will be able to benefit at increased availability of professionals at different times. Scarcity of healthcare professionals, especially doctors and nurses it need of the patients to benefits from qualified doctors in extended hours (Tormey, 2010). The promotion of these extended hours of services will be the key to its success. It is very important that, if customers are ...