Content about Wellness

Growing the health-and-wellness business remains a top priority for Sam’s Club as the warehouse club operator has identified those key categories as areas where it can demonstrate value, drive member loyalty and gain market share.


Sam’s has high expectations for health and wellness, along with food and consumables, as it looks to deliver on its brand promise of “savings made simple” and maintain the same-store sales momentum experienced throughout 2010 that culminated with a 2.7% gain in the fourth quarter.


WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT’S IMPORTANT — It’s interesting how things can change over the course of a year, and the huge growth of Rite Aid’s Wellness+ program provides a good example.

(THE NEWS: Rite Aid finishes tough fiscal year, but Q4 shows improvements. For the full story, click here.)

DEERFIELD, Ill. — Beginning in mid-March, the AARP/Walgreens Wellness Tour will embark on another 10-month tour to provide an expected $14 million worth of free health tests.

If you ask executives at Food City, it’s part of the role of a supermarket pharmacy operator to help its customers understand how healthy eating plays into overall health and wellness. It’s a responsibility they take pretty seriously.

Hannaford has been an innovator in the drive to bridge food and pharmacy. The chain’s dedication to health and wellness really gained attention in 2006 when it implemented Guiding Stars, the first storewide nutrition navigation system in the United States.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT’S IMPORTANT — The name of the game for tomorrow’s successful healthcare retailer is ubiquity — because it’s no longer good enough to have the better corner location or the splashiest of websites; tomorrow’s healthcare retailer will need to be able to interact with its patient whenever, however and wherever that patient happens to be at the time.

SALISBURY, N.C. — Food Lion is continuing its 17-year corporate partnership with the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association and once again serving as a sponsor, along with Thompson Hospitality, of the CIAA Women's Health and Wellness Symposium.

PITTSBURGH and BENTONVILLE, Ark. — After providing its products to Rite Aid customers through a co-branded store format for more than a decade, GNC is making its foray into the warehouse club for the first time by offering select private-label products at Sam's Club locations.

GNC's products will boost Sam's Club's current health-and-wellness offerings by extending GNC's specialty retailing brand to mass-market customers.

With pharmaceutical and healthcare expenditures on the rise, a primary care shortage at hand and an expected upswing in patients diagnosed with chronic diseases, there’s no denying that the marketplace is in the midst of an evolution. Despite the challenges, Walgreens’ health-and-wellness division has positioned itself for such changes and, according to headquarter executives, has a winning strategy in place — broadening and deepening its payer relationships.


PORTLAND, Ore. — Aisle7 on Thursday announced the availability of an online decision support engine to provide science-based, self-care product recommendations by way of questionnaires, interactive widgets and proprietary content-targeting technology.

The new Aisle7 online decision support tools include a “Homeopathic Medicine Finder,” which was created in partnership with Boiron, and will be featured across more than 2,000 in-store retail locations and 150 websites served by Aisle7.

CAMP HILL, Pa. — Tony Montini returned to Rite Aid just in time to help leverage what is becoming a very powerful Wellness+ loyalty card program that has cracked the code for the chain in terms of tying the front-end to the back bench by way of the patient. 


And while Montini returns to the retail ranks as SVP category management, he is well-prepared to make Wellness+ work gangbusters with the supplier community. His background is in corporate marketing with advertising agency Marc USA, where he was EVP and COO. 


NEW YORK — It seems that most women are focusing on themselves by emphasizing their health and well-being as the economy is entering a post-recessionary phase, according to a new survey.