There is an intersection near me with a Shaw’s (with pharmacy inside), CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid. How do they all stay in business? Shaw’s is a full size supermarket. The other three IMO don’t really have anything distinctive about them. None of them offer prices much lower, or selection much better, than the others. Unless you have a gift card, or reward points to one of these stores I see no reason why you would pick one over the other. How can there really be enough business in such a tiny area for four drugstores?
I know a lot of times, a simple selection of side-of-street, traffic patterns, ease of entry into a thoroughfare, and location make business more lucrative based on travel patterns. Assume American right-driving and grid-coordinate streets, but adaptable easily to other plans.
So imagine a crossing with four corners, NW, NE, SE, SW. Imagine the main road is a road into downtown or a big business district. And finally, imagine that this main road goes north to the main business district.
The grocery with pharmacy (Shaw’s in your case) will want SW corner. Folks who drive north to work drive south after. Easy right-turn without traffic into lot for folks going home who need groceries and maybe a scrip, plus an easier exit to same road going south, since there’s a light right there to stop traffic.
Next up is any pharmacy positioned in NE. They will probably be a chain that doubles down on convenience store stuff. They get the high-profit sales of food, candy, energy drinks of morning commuters Shaw’s loses, and more scrips (especially those filled at night).
SE and NW corners: siphon off a number of users. Those from lateral neighborhoods (come from e/w but turn north to go to work or back from work in reverse). People who want shorter waits than the main-thoroughfare icons. And neighborhood users with mobility issues, who can’t easily cross a street.
There’s a reason many roads have Starbucks on opposing corners, if not already doing the four-cornet strategy. The main idea is looking at traffic flow and nailing someone coming or going, no matter the destination.
This is America. Americans love drugs. That’s how.
Interesting, Student Driver. In Holland, we have gas stations on oppposite sides of the freeway for that reason.
I knew that with shoe stores, it’s about a customer going from one to another to have more choice. And we have lots and lots of gas stations on the cheapest side of the border here.
Without your explanation, I would have suspected all four drugstores stay in business by doling out the drugs needed to make meth, or some shady reason like that.
Ca. 2000, I worked at a grocery store, with a Walgreens across the street and an Osco a block down the road.
We actually complemented each other, because each store did something that the others didn’t (compounding, certain insurance plans, etc.) and if one store ran out of something, in most cases we could borrow from the folks across the street and then pay them back when the next order came in.
I think many people get all of their prescriptions filled at the same pharmacy. And when they’re there to fill the scripts, they may buy non-pharmacy items out of convenience. So each chain pharmacy has a certain built-in audience.
Volume.
Whereas here in the Twin Cities, we have intersections with separate Super America gas stations on opposite sides of the street, because Minnesotans are just that lazy.
There are intersections in DC with multiple coffee shops on different corners. Heck, with multiple Starbucks on different corners.
I was in London last spring, and it seemed that Starbucks and Pret a Manger had taken over the entire city. Walk a hundred yards on the block and you run into the next one. Don’t those fuckers eat or drink anything else?
Manhattan is nearly as bad; chain stores and national brand stores everywhere. I try to stay in Brooklyn, where we might hold out for a few more years.
This is NOT why freaks like me move into big cities.
Some insurance plans are starting to funnel people into less costly “narrow networks” where you can only use certain chain pharmacies. Not sure that makes a difference in terms of foot traffic for any of the stores you mention.
CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid are all essentially the same - pharmacy in back, you have to walk thru aisles of assorted other retail junk. I am not sure how these stores even stay in business as any time I go into any one of them they are empty of customers. It does not matter if they are near one another or set alone. Yet, they persist.
Brand loyalty, perhaps? People grow up shopping at one particular chain, and they continue this practice once they are transplanted somewhere else.
Also, don’t underestimate the importance of location. There’s an intersection similar to the one described in the OP near me. One drug store–the CVS–is in a strip mall. Its parking lot is cramped because it shares spots with the adjacent businesses, so I only go there when I’m at the strip mall for some other purpose (or when I’m not driving). I’m sure it is able to get a lot of customers just because of its proximity to other shops, despite the crappy parking.
In contrast, the Walgreen’s across the street has a bigger parking lot and is better suited to folks who just want to pop in and out. It’s also more visible for those who aren’t unfamiliar with the area. If you don’t know the area very well, you aren’t going to know the CVS is there.
I think the two stores also are kinda different merchandise wise. And I’ve been warned not to go to one of them because of its inferior service. (I can’t remember which, though!) I’m guessing for every person who thinks Store X is horrible, there’s another that thinks the same about Store Y. So the hatred is balanced out.
In my part of Brooklyn (Brooklyn Heights) I’ve got, last time I checked, two Rite Aids, a CVS and two Duane Reade stores within a few blocks of each other. The CVS and and one of the Duane Reade stores are actually on the same block. It isn’t because of traffic patterns – it’s all foot traffic.
I don’t get it.
If there is sufficient volume, there may be so many customers wanting drugs that there are enough people to line up at all 4 pharmacies.
The problem then becomes, why isn’t a particular pharmacy more preferable, such that over time, everyone starts shopping there, and the other 3 die?
So, ok, if one pharmacy is more preferable, more people go to it. Due to the limitations on construction projects, the pharmacy can’t just add more counters or extra space for more clerks without going through a very long and expensive process. So…with a longer line, that pharmacy becomes less preferable, and people frequent the other 3. A self balancing equilibrium. Neat. All 4 stay in business because the “dominant” pharmacy isn’t dominant enough to expand enough to handle all the customers.
Still, this is an oddity. It seems like it would be more efficient if there were one large pharmacy - you’d end up needing fewer clerks per customer, you’d make more efficient use of real estate space and utility and taxes and other costs. So you’d expect consolidation into one to be the long term outcome.
I don’t think it’s true that they all stay in business. Chains close drugstores all the time, and open in different locations. I honestly think it’s part of the business model–they stay flexible to a certain degree, which lets them treat their location and staff as more of an investment to be bought and sold when the times seem right.
Similarly, in Studio City, California (part of L.A.) there’s an intersection with a CVS on both sides. For years I’ve wondered how they both survive.
I think I can understand why in some urban areas there is a Starbucks on every block. My theory is that people walk to Starbucks to buy a cup of coffee to bring back to work, or buy the coffee on the way to work. But they don’t want the coffee to get cold by the time they get to their desk, so Starbucks tries to put a store within a certain distance of each office building. (And all of the Starbucks stores are corporate-owned, so there’s no issue of cannibalization.)
There’s an intersection in my city that has two ice cream shops right next to each other. 
One is a local chain that’s open year-round; the other is only open during the non-winter months, and they also have burgers, etc. too but their emphasis is on ice cream.
Tell me about it. And the great used bookshop, the Irish bar, and the comic book place on Montague Street are all gone in the past few years.
If Teresa’s – the Polish coffee shop just west of Hicks with the excellent tripe soup – closes down, I’m moving to the North Pole.
What? No, Costa Coffee?
Eammon’s? Yes, I miss that place. There isn’t a regular bar anywhere nearby these days. And especially the used bookstore. I was never in the comic book store, don’t remember it. Not really my thing.