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I took advantage of my short wait at the pharmacy yesterday by seeking out the greeting card section and searching for a needed birthday card when I came up with this idea.
If customers are waiting for a prescription to be filled at the pharmacy and have no real shopping to do, they might as well
consider browsing the greeting cards for an upcoming occasion or peruse a magazine selection. Even if they do have shopping to do, having the cards and magazines right there, near the drop off area of the pharmacy counter in the store might encourage customers to buy these items.
I think that the greeting card and magazine industries would profit from more unplanned purchases if a bored crowd was offered the idea of shopping for these items while killing some time.
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Beats looking through the vitamin shelves. |
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Chocolate bars. I crave chocolate when I'm Ill (I also crave chocolate when i'm not ill, but what the hell). |
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If you are collecting the prescription for someone else, buy them a "Get Well Soon" card. If you are collecting it for yourself, buy "I'm sick. Send help" cards and send them to all your friends. |
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This is so darn simple you'd think someone who runs a pharmacy would have thought of it by now. You get a hot, fresh croissant! (I'll even add your choice of turkey or ham plus warm, gooey cheese if you can convince my local pharmacy to try your idea.) |
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I think a problem with the magazines might be that people read them and leave them dog-eared etc but do not buy. most small pharmacies do not sell cards and magazines becuase it *used* to be that the cost of stocking a pharmacy was enormous anyway. |
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I guess it all comes down to simple economics. Pharmacy counters tend not to be big money-makers, and don't encourage impulse buys, so they get slotted away in distant corners. Magazines and newspapers are the opposite: rapid sellers, impulse buys, near entrances. |
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<insert obligatory shout of "This is not a public library!"> |
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Leave the cards and magazine up front with the cosmetics and batteries for universal remotes -- I like taking the odd moment to talk about labels on rubbers or hearing aid batteries with the rarely idle druggist. |
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Well, I'm glad somebody thought of this. I was in Walgreens pharmacy yesterday. Their greeting cards are far from the pharmacy - I had to look hard for them. I didn't even see magazines around. I guess they don't like people hanging around the pharmacy area or something. |
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They should leave a few medical dictionaries around for customers to browse through. These often bring out the hypochondriac in people and would probably bump up their drug sales a notch or two. |
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Customer, anxiously looking up from pages of dictionary: |
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"Erm...Have you got anything for Agammaglobulinemia while I'm here? No? How about actinic keratosis?........O.K. and I think I'm probably going to need some acetaminophen as well. |
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This is specifically the reason that most pharmacies are at the back of the store, so you have to walk past everything to get there. It's called 'impulse shopping', and is the reason that little crap like candy and magazines line the aisles you stand in while you're unloading your stuff from the cart. |
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Heck, put out one of those sample-pushing employees back there, too, and the pharmacy'd double their business:
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"Would you like to try some free ibuprophen? You would? Great! How about some Advil? Great! And lactaid? Excellent. [pauses] Oh, my, sir, you're looking a bit green around the gills. Have you considered an anti-nausea medication, located in aisle nine to your right?" |
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Blissmiss, I visited a CVS pharmacy in downtown Chicago just last Friday, just to check out their layout with regard to this idea. Their pharmacy was in the back of the store and their greeting cards and magazines were in other aisles, far from the pharmacy area, just like at Walgreens. In fact, they seemed to have things set up pretty much in the same way as the Walgreens I mentioned. Just an FYI. |
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The pharmacy was tucked away with some vitamins lining the area. I did not see much of an area to stand around in, much less sit at, there. No magazines, no nothing. Like I said, though, this was downtown, where space is at a premium, so you may be onto something. |
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I'd also like to add that while I was downtown, I stopped into a bakery and ordered myself a croissant, in honor of the HalfBakery. It was delicious! ;) |
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FYI, I had a whole croissant, regular sized. It was completely baked and I was alone - the idea to have it was all mine. There was no custard (or extra anything for that matter) in it, on it, or near it. I am not sure who the baker was, but a nice lady behind the counter handed it to me. I took it outside with me on my stroll around town and tore it apart to eat it. |
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Mm, I wish I had real croissants for this idea instead of virtual ones. I could use a snack. |
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