following paragraphs will analyze Walgreens competitors, Rite Aid, CVS, and drugstore.com.Rite Aid CorporationRite Aid, America’s Neighborhood Drugstore, is the number one pharmacy leader and for the first time was named one of the 1998 “Business Week’s 50”- the magazine's annual ranking of the nation’s best performing companies. Rite-Aid was ranked 48th, and the only drugstore chain to make a list topped by Microsoft and dominated by financial and high-tech firms. Rite Aid’s success according the Mr. Grass, chairman and CEO, was due to a combination of factors including an ongoing expansion/acquisition strategy, development of state-of-the art technology, marketing and brand differentiating initiatives and the creation of a top-notch senior management team.Between 1996 and 1998, Rite Aid acquired three of the country’s leading regional drug chains: Thrifty Payless, the largest drugstore chain on the West Coast with 1,007 stores and $4.4 billion in sales, and Harco and K&B in the South. Capitalizing on these acquisitions, Rite Aid continued to develop hundreds of new freestanding prototype stores in the targeted markets already served by these chains. Currently, Rite Aid operates approximately 4,000 stores in 31 states and the District of Columbia, pushing this corporation up the ladder to becoming one of the nation’s largest drugstore chains. The brisk pace with which Rite Aid has and continues to proceed in its expansion and acquisitions is not taking place without some setbacks and inherently large complications. In 1999, Rite Aid experienced a tough year with lawsuits, investigations and falling stock prices. Rite Aid was faced with the worst performing stocks on the S&P 500, because an auditing firm that has been with Rite Aid since 1968 resigned their account with them in 1999 due to a lack in trust in Rite Aid’s management. Since January 2000, Rite Aid’s shares ha...
