The reordering of mass retailing, which is rapidly transforming the industry and making old definitions obsolete, is quickly accelerating. So it is that such traditional drug chains as Walgreens and CVS are transitioning into health care providers. The retail outlets once easily identified as discount stores are now challenging traditional food retailers for leadership in
Mass retailing has embarked on an extended season of unprecedented change, which will inevitably reorder the segment’s long-settled order of things. Where or when this season will end is anyone’s guess. How the ending will impact the community is far from certain. This much, however, is certain: What’s past is prologue — and the future
Like so much in retailing, the Christmas selling season is a uniquely American creation. That’s the good news — and the bad. We probably didn’t invent Kris Kringle, but we Americans certainly popularized him, making him the centerpiece of the holiday selling season. Whatever the original definition and intent of Black Friday, we Americans transformed
Ask 100 people to name the two best Beatles songs and you’re likely to get 200 different answers. The point is, identifying the best of anything is not all that easy. To the contrary, it’s a daunting assignment. Which brings us to the subject for today. Can anyone here name the best retailer? Or the
All early evidence points to an inescapable fact: Walmart is serious about expanding its customer base by upgrading its offerings, presentation and consumer options, both in-store and online. Initial documentation of the retailer’s intent came with the opening, earlier this year, of an upscale store in Springdale, Ark., a location adjacent to its Bentonville, Ark.,
Amid the myriad retailing developments that have distinguished — for good or ill — the retail landscape thus far in 2022, perhaps the most surprising (though not entirely unexpected) alteration has been the emergence (or reemergence) of the supermarket segment of the mass retailing community. If this re-ignition has taken some industry people by surprise,
As the publication does each year, Fortune magazine named the “100 best companies to work for” in its April/May issue. Many of the usual suspects — Hewlett Packard, Marriott, Bank of America, FedEx, Hyatt Hotels, American Express, Genentech — made the list. More surprising was the exclusion of all but a precious few mass retailers.
Among the assignments the editorial staff at Racher Press, publisher of MMR and Chain Drug Review, carries out with alacrity and a degree of professionalism is that of bringing buyers and sellers together, of greasing the table where buyers and sellers can meet and move their businesses forward. So it was on a chilly Tuesday
On Thursday, March 3, the editors of Racher Press, publisher of MMR and Chain Drug Review, gathered together five industry-leading personalities to discuss the state of the world and the retailing industry. Without naming names, those on hand included a senior executive with one of the nation’s leading food retailers, two senior consumer packaged goods
The retail pharmacist, backbone of the retail community’s battle with COVID-19, is pushing back against the punishing demands being exacted in the war against the current pandemic. With good reason. In their unending war with COVID, U.S. retailers are, understandably, asking more of the in-store pharmacist than can reasonably be requested — or demanded. In
As we relive American retailing history, which we occasionally do, we’re reminded that Kmart, once the largest general merchandise retailer in the United States, has dwindled a bit in size. The current store count for the former Troy, Mich., dynamo is … five. Five? That’s correct. In mid-January, Kmart’s holding company announced that it plans
Later this year, 60 years will have passed since the first Walmart opened its doors in Rogers, Ark., the town that borders the retailer’s Bentonville headquarters. Put another way, most Americans don’t remember the United States without a Walmart at which to shop or peruse or merely gossip about or await the day when the