environment. Renovating the beauty section of the store has also included repainting the walls with brighter colors and making the area more pleasant. The older store incorporated brown colors and had canopies overshadowing the department (Brookman 2). With all of the improvements, Walgreens is already beginning to notice an increase in sales. In fact, for the month of March (2000), its same-store sales increased eight percent, while total sales for the month rose 15.8 percent (Brookman 2). Walgreen Company calls the strategy implemented for these improvements “basic department management” (Brookman 2).On the Internet, opportunities lie at every turn. On April 4, 2000, Walgreen Company is joining The WorldWide Retail Exchange. Along with eleven other large famous retail chains, The WorldWide Retail Exchange operates more than 30,000 stores, with combined sales of more than $300 billion. This new merger will be a web-based marketplace, enabling transactions between retailers operating in the food, general merchandise and drugstore sectors. It will be an open exchange and will provide an information highway for publicly available information about items with private price and promotion information between multiple buyers and sellers. The exchange also will provide the means for auctioning products. Walgreens is joining, as a founder, along with Albertson’s (US), Auchan (France), Casino (France), CVS (US), Kingfisher (UK), K-Mart (US), Marks & Spencer (UK), Royal Ahold (The Netherlands), Safeway, Inc. (US), Target (US) and Tesco (UK). This venture could bring a huge change to online purchasing. (http://www.walgreens.com/about/press/othernews/040400.jhtr) With all of the many opportunities out in the industry today, Walgreen Company has remained constant with one solid strategy. This simplistic approach has helped them achieve the success they have today: Enter new markets “Dense up&...
