GREENACRES, Wash. -- At Tidyman's here, the pharmacists work hard to get new customers. They work even harder to keep them. The goal is to build customer loyalty.
"We get them with price. We keep them with service," says Ken Mitley, director of pharmacy at Tidyman's, which has a total of seven pharmacies inside its 10 supermarkets. Tidyman's operates stores with pharmacies in eastern Washington, northern Idaho and western Montana.
"It's hard to get people to break habits," says Mitley, who doubles as pharmacy manager of the Post Falls, Idaho, store. "People think they have to get a new prescription to change pharmacies. But once we get them, we can keep them," he says.
Sharp pricing and promotions that build and emphasize customer loyalty are important parts of the appeal of Tidyman's, which had its beginnings as a warehouse store but has gradually added services.
Ten prescription prices are posted, including: Capoten 25-mg tablets, 100s, $56.88; Dilantin 100-mg capsules, 100s, $15.39; and Zantac 100-mg tablets, 60s, $81.99. A 10% discount is available to senior citizens.
All Tidyman's pharmacy customers get an "Rx punch card" that is punched each time a prescription is filled. Five punches is good for $5 off on either the customer's grocery bill or his next prescription. Pharmacy patients can accumulate points that can be exchanged for gifts, including jewelry, tools and home electronics, through the Vision Value Club, operated by Advanced Promotion Technologies, Pompano Beach, Fla. Typically, one point is given for each $1 spent. "It's the 1990s version of Green Stamps," says Mitley. The gifts are chosen from a booklet and mailed to the person's house.
Tidyman's regularly cross-merchandises pharmacy with other areas of the grocery store. One promotion that Mitley says has proved especially popular with both children and their parents has been a free video rental with a child's prescription.
These types of promotions build loyalty, says Mitley. "They keep people coming back."
The price promotions are backed up with a strong emphasis on service.
After dispensing a prescription at the Post Falls pharmacy, Mitley will ask the patient to step over to the counseling area, "so I can tell you about this medication." The counseling area is marked off by a 7-foot-high partition that provides auditory as well as visual privacy.
Mitley then proceeds to ask the patient if he has had the medication before and then describes what the medication is for, how much to take, how often to take it, and whether or not to take it on an empty stomach, for example. The information is reinforced with a computer-generated information leaflet about the medication given to each patient on all new prescriptions and on refills if the customer requests more information.
Tidyman's pharmacists also will provide the computer-generated leaflets to customers with medication samples from their doctors. Then when they get a prescription to be filled, they will be more likely to have it filled at Tidyman's pharmacy, says Mitley.
On one occasion, a pharmacy customer confided in Mitley that he had lost his appetite and wasn't eating properly since his wife had died. Mitley contacted a local senior citizen organization to provide meals and to check up on him.
Tidyman's also participates in a government program for people who can't afford their prescription medications, for which it sets aside $50 a month, and works with the local health department to administer a flu shot program in the fall.
Prescriptions for sick children are accompanied by animal and scratch-and-sniff stickers.
Prescription customers who may have to wait to have their prescriptions filled are given a coupon good for a free cup of coffee at the store's espresso counter.
Still another service offered by Tidyman's pharmacies in Post Falls and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, is to accept payment on electric bills for customers. "We get between 10 and 30 a day," says Mitley. "It saves a stamp and is an added service. It's part of the benefit of one-stop shopping, and gives people one more incentive to get their prescriptions filled here."
Tidyman's is currently looking at sites in central and western Montana for new stores that will include pharmacies. Mitley explains that both Idaho and Montana are experiencing population growth due to an influx of transplanted Californians, and even of some California businesses.
Bob Swanson, vice president of nonfoods, says Tidyman's wouldn't open a new store without a pharmacy. Among the reasons Swanson cites are the graying of America and the 10% boost to health and beauty care sales from having a pharmacy in the store.
Although only four pharmacies inside Tidyman's are store-owned, the plan is to convert the leased-space pharmacies to corporate ownership over the next few years. In addition, all new stores will include Tidyman's own pharmacies.
The four corporate-owned pharmacies are in Coeur d'Alene, Post Falls and Moscow, Idaho, and Kalispell, Mont. The leased-space pharmacies, one in Missoula, Mont., and two in Spokane, Wash., currently are owned and operated by independent pharmacists.
"We are buying out existing leases as they expire," says Mitley, in favor of corporately owned and operated pharmacies. The two leased pharmacies in Spokane most likely will be converted to store-owned within two years, with those pharmacists being offered positions with Tidyman's, says Mitley.
The main benefit of corporate ownership, says Mitley, is to be able to provide more consistent customer service, including longer hours.
Also driving Tidyman's shift to corporate ownership are the ability to purchase better and to secure more business from third-party plans, says Mitley.
Currently, about half of the prescriptions filled at Tidyman's pharmacies are paid for by third-party plans.
"We make every effort to hook up with an insurance company, even if it's for one customer," says Mitley. While he's not happy with the reimbursement of most plans, he explains, "this is the way it is," and adds that these customers of the 45 to 50 plans accepted also are buying other merchandise in the store. "We accept any third-party plan. We look at the overall picture. They buy other things. What we do helps the store."
To increase third-party business, Tidyman's recently joined Merck/Medco's Coordinated Care network, and also Super Net, the supermarket pharmacy network formed by supermarket operators.
Mitley says Tidyman's makes every effort to hire pharmacists and pharmacy technicians with outgoing personalities and communications skills who will relate well to older people.
Tidyman's also has sought to hire pharmacists who have owned their own stores and developed their own patient followings. Mitley says that type of business experience is also helpful because each pharmacy is run as its own little business, with its own monthly profit-and-loss statement.
Mitley, a graduate of the College of Pharmacy at Washington State University, Pullman, is a case in point, having owned his own pharmacy in Post Falls for seven years. He then managed a local chain called Low Cost Drug Variety, with six stores, for four years.
Mitley managed an independent pharmacy inside a Tidyman's store for a year and a half before joining Tidyman's three years ago. Since then he has opened Tidyman's four store-owned pharmacies. He spends two
days as administrator and three days as a pharmacist at Post Falls.
Don Klotz, another pharmacist at Post Falls, also was previously an independent pharmacist. "We've kept our customers," says Mitley, speaking for himself and Klotz. He explains, "Customers develop a certain comfort level with a pharmacist."
Tidyman's pharmacists actively promote over-the-counter medications. "What's in front of the pharmacy is just as important as what's behind the counter," says Mitley. "The pharmacist's role is to help in front as well and answer questions." The pharmacists will special-order OTCs for customers.
Because of increased traffic volume in the food store, pharmacists in supermarkets tend to get more questions about OTCs, says Mitley. "With 20,000 to 30,000 people a week going through the store," he says. "It's important for pharmacists to be out there and be accessible."
Pharmacists work with HBC managers on a day-to-day basis, Mitley says, and suggest product lines to put in. For example, he says, the HBC managers took his advice to stock a nasal decongestant in 100s instead of 24s, and to expand product lines in foot care and cough-and-cold.
Tidyman's, in business since 1972 and employee-owned since 1986, is a relative newcomer to pharmacy, having opened its first two store-owned pharmacies in November 1991. First Coeur d'Alene was converted from a leased operation, and then later that month Tidyman's opened its first new store with a pharmacy in Post Falls.
Most pharmacy customers leave off their prescriptions while grocery shopping and come back later to pick them up, says Mitley. This shopping pattern is helped by the locale of the pharmacy in the store, up front on the left, near one of the main store entrances. Customers drop off their prescriptions upon entering the store, and after shopping in a counterclockwise pattern will wind up back at the pharmacy.
The 350-square-foot pharmacy in Post Falls inside Tidyman's 57,500-square-foot store is also at the end of a power aisle, benefiting from the traffic flow past dairy, soft drinks and paper. Pharmacy is visible from both the front checkstands and from the back.
Refinements were made to enhance the visibility of pharmacy in the supermarkets as a result of a survey of more than 200 customers at its Coeur d'Alene store conducted in October 1993.
"Twenty percent of customers who shopped Tidyman's didn't see the pharmacy or realize we had one," recalls Swanson. To make the pharmacy more visible, the aisle in front of the pharmacy was cut down to 5 feet, and a listing of the pharmacy's third-party plans was posted at the store entrance.
Although the mass merchandisers are generally acknowledged as the price leaders, Tidyman's cultivates a price image on maintenance medications. "We will match their prices," says Mitley. He explains, "Each pharmacy manager has the flexibility to adjust the pricing for the area."
But even as Tidyman's pharmacies remain competitive on prices, Mitley acknowledges convenience and service loom more important in Tidyman's future.
Pharmacies in supermarkets will continue to grow because of the convenience offered, says Mitley. He is optimistic that freedom-of-choice legislation, including a bill pending in Washington state, will mean that people with third-party plans can go to the pharmacy of their choice.
As third-party plans grow, price will become less important, says Mitley. "Customers will look even more for service." Tidyman's already is positioning itself for that future.
