• Drug Store News, Monday, November 8, 2010 10:58 AM

Greg Wasson, Walgreens president and CEO, says that the retailer is in the midst of an evolution into "a retail health and daily living store" and that it wants to "own the strategic category of 'well,'" Antoinette Alexander reports. The trend of consumers taking charge of their health care decisions plays perfectly into the company's strategy, he says.

Speaking to analysts at an all-day conference last week, Watson said that two-thirds of all Americans live within three miles of a Walgreens. The stores themselves are undergoing a transformation that began with the rollout of the company's Customer Centric Retailing, or CCR, store format in 2008. It's now in 2,200 of 5,500 stores, and has continued with the expansion of its urban prototype and the newly announced focus on fresh foods.

"We are going to skate to where that puck will be, and that's more prevention and management of chronic disease," says Wasson.

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