Walgreens Should Embrace Health Services Amid Leadership Changes, Staffing Struggles

Former Express Scripts boss Tim Wentworth takes the reigns as the new CEO at Walgreens at a pivotal juncture. Strong competitors like Walmart are making strides in the pharmacy aisle, while Walgreens pharmacists are protesting what they view as insufficient staffing and resources to do their jobs safely and ethically for their patients.

Walmart Pharmacy has long been a leader on price, and over the past year it has also become a leader in customer satisfaction with its pharmacy services and speed/checkout. While Walgreens has struggled in these areas versus peers, in recent months customers feel it has improved and is closing the gap with Walmart.

Wentworth will need to cut through the noise and identify what will move the needle most for Walgreens in his first 90 days. While employees feel stores are understaffed, customers sharing feedback with HundredX actually rank Walgreens as a leader in both store and health services, and middle of the pack on speed and checkout. The real issue, according to customers, appears to be its employees’ knowledge and attitude, where it lags its peers.

Analyzing over 70,000 pieces of customer feedback across 12 pharmacy brands, from September 2022 through September 2023, we find:

Walgreens’ growth outlook is improving, with a 1% increase in Purchase Intent¹,² over the past three months while most other leading brands were flat to down.
Some key reasons for the improvement include progress for Walgreens’ pharmacy services, speed, and checkout recently. Net favorability³ for pharmacy services and speed/checkout were +4% and +2% over the last quarter.
Walgreens should continue to lean into its leadership in satisfaction with health and store services. The management team seems to be appropriately focused on this opportunity based on its comments on its October 12 earnings call. The challenge lies in maintaining this lead amidst staffing woes and recent employee walkouts. Its recent unveiling of new virtual healthcare services should help.
Meanwhile, after improvements over the year, Walmart is now the leader in customer satisfaction with pharmacy services, passing Kroger and Costco.
In the digital arena, Walgreens and Walmart exhibit closely matched customer perception concerning website and app usability. With a 1% rise in Purchase Intent for customers who primarily shop online since May, the emphasis on digital platforms makes sense. Wentworth’s experience with digital pharmacies should be useful here.

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Purchase Intent for the pharmacy industry remained stable over the past six months, even as it fell for most other similar industries. Still, Purchase Intent is down slightly
(-1%) for the pharmacy industry over the past year.

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Walmart Pharmacy is the only major pharmacy brand to gain in Purchase Intent (+2%) over the
past year. It overtook both CVS (-2%) and Walgreens (-1%) while narrowing its gap with Costco
Pharmacy. Still, Walgreens is starting to make up some ground, gaining 1% over the past three
months.

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While Walmart is the leader in net favorability for pharmacy services, Walgreens has gained 4% in the last three months to narrow its gap with Walmart (-1%).

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Walmart Pharmacy is also strong in speed/checkout, having gained 4% net favorability (more than any competitor) in the past year. Walgreens is gaining, however, after jumping 2% in the past three months. Meanwhile, Walmart fell 1%.

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Walgreens, not Walmart, is a leader in health services, just behind CVS. Net favorability
toward health services rose 1% for Walgreens over the past three months. Conversely, Walmart is middle of the pack after falling 3% over the past three months.

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Walgreens is also the leader in store services. Net favorability toward store services rose 1% over the past three months while Walmart is at the bottom of the pack after falling 4% over the past three months.

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Customers perceive the attitude and knowledge of employees at Walgreens and CVS to be below that of other pharmacies. Meanwhile, with a 1% gain over the year, Walmart is steadily closing the gap with top-ranked
companies Costco and Kroger.

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Purchase Intent for customers who primarily shop in-store fell 2% over the past year and 1%
over the past six months. While Purchase Intent is also down for people who primarily shop
online over the year, it has gained 1% since May.

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Walmart and Walgreens lead on customer perception toward their websites and apps. However, while Walgreens has gained net favorability in the past three months (+2%), Walmart fell (-4%).

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Please contact our team for a deeper look at HundredX's pharmacy data, which includes more than 150,000 pieces of customer feedback across 12 pharmacy brands (including over 12,000 on Walmart Pharmacy and over 55,000 on Walgreens).

All metrics presented, including Net Purchase (Purchase Intent) and Net Positive Percent / Favorability, are presented on a trailing three-month basis unless otherwise noted.
Purchase Intent represents the percentage of customers who expect to spend more with that chain over the next 12 months, minus those that intend to spend less. We find businesses that see Purchase Intent trends gain versus the industry or peers have often seen revenue growth rates, margins, and/or market share also improve versus peers.
HundredX measures Net Favorability towards a driver of customer satisfaction as Net Positive Percent (NPP), which is the percentage of customers who view a factor as a positive (reason they liked the products, people, or experiences) minus the percentage who see the same factor as a negative.

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Where are customers "migrating"?
What are they saying they will use more of in the next 12 months?
What are the key drivers of their purchase decisions and financial outcomes?

Current clients see immediate benefits across multiple areas including strategy, finance, operations, pricing, investing, and marketing.

Our insights enable business leaders to define and identify specific drivers and decisions enabling them to grow their market share.

Please contact our team to learn more about which businesses across 75 industries are best positioned with customers and the decisions you can make to grow your brand’s market share.

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HundredX is a mission-based data and insights provider. HundredX does not make investment recommendations. However, we believe in the wisdom of the crowd to inform the outlook for businesses and industries. For more info on specific drivers of customer satisfaction, other companies within 75+ other industries we cover, or if you'd like to learn more about using Data for Good, please reach out: https://hundredx.com/contact.

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Consumer spending muted amid rising prices

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Consumers are navigating still-high prices with resilience. HundredX analysis, based on millions of pieces of customer feedback from July 2021 through April 2023 across 3,200+ companies, indicates inflation remains persistent, but consumers are cautiously hanging on. New Consumer Price Index (CPI) data shows prices increased 3.4% in April from a year ago, compared to 3.5% in March, which highlights a slight easing in inflation month-to-month. Still, HundredX data shows that consumers still feel negative about prices in general, pointing to inflation’s stickiness and consumer frustrations over the consistently high prices of everyday goods. Generally, we’ve seen that changes to HundredX’s Price favorability index are typically inversely correlated with movement in the CPI levels (i.e., inflation) reported by the US government.