Following Wal-Mart's lead, Publix to lower its generic drug prices

Posted Oct 12th 2006 1:01PM by Brian White
Filed under: Deals, Launches, Industry, Consumer Experience, Television, Competitive Strategy, Wal-Mart (WMT)

Looks like Wal-Mart's recent lowering on generic prescription drugs is starting to have an industry-wide effect. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) had made its announcement a little over a few weeks ago. Competitor Target Corp (NYSE: TGT) followed suit only a short few hours after, saying that it too would lower generic prescription drug prices on many widely-prescribed drugs (in the neighborhood of 300 drugs) by 30% to 40%.

Now, national grocery retailer Publix Super Markets Inc. (OTCBB: PUSH) has stated its intention to do the same thing, which could cause other retailers to follow suit as well. As I mused yesterday, this could spell bad news for national drug and specialty retailers like CVS, Rite-Aid and Walgreens -- which can really stand to lose drug customers to the larger retail chains and see some kind of overall sales loss -- either large (catastrophic) or small (impactful).

Will the Publix move turn fellow grocery retailers like Pathmark, Albertsons and Kroger into low-price generic drug retailers as well? That's a good question, but it seems pretty clear to me that Publix will not be the last retailer to follow Wal-Mart's lead, if only for the public perception of not being known as one that did not follow the leader.

Tags: Kroger, Publix, Target, TGT, Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Wal-martStores,Inc., WMT

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

10-12-2006 @ 5:57PM

Art Moore said...

Sounds to me like we have been getting ripped off big time for these retailers to be able to cut prices in the ranges they are indicating and to still be making a profit, which we KNOW they are!!
ART MOORE

10-13-2006 @ 11:44AM

Josephine Mayberry said...

Reguarding the comments about the stores ripping us off big time this is only the beginning you will see how the drug manufacturing co's have raped us for decades and our gov. does nothing about it.
Think about that on election day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

10-13-2006 @ 12:15PM

john h. said...

About Walgreens, seems like noone is keeping up with the company comments. For the older customers on Medicare part B, who would be expected to be the biggest benefactors of WalMart's new pricing, their prices at Walgreens is on average less than $5. Add to that the skimpy service at WalMart (the one pharmacist closes for lunch) a huge inventory of medications in contrast to a smaller one at WalMart and many more Walgreens locations than WalMart, do you really think Walgreens is hurting?

10-13-2006 @ 12:14PM

john h. said...

10-13-2006 @ 1:10PM

Gary E. Sattler said...

Read Carefully:

It was announced in September that the State of Wisconsin shall receive nearly $2 million dollars to be used for recovery costs to the Medicaid Program.

The New Jersey based firm, Schering-Plough was accused of bribing doctors to prescribe it's medications... not as preferred products but just to prescribe them. Other accusations were also involved.

In all, Schering-Plough will pay a total of $435 million in damages, penalties and fines.

Schering-Plough reported $9.5 billion in sales for 2005.