Walgreens will use its $9.41 billion takeover of rival Rite Aid to spread its philosophy on making drugstores destinations for customers looking to stay healthy or buy beauty products.
The nation's largest drugstore chain also is expected to flex its beefed-up negotiating muscle to wring better deals from drugmakers and other suppliers. But experts say those discounts won't automatically trickle down to consumers.
In fact, customers may not see a huge impact on their wallets if the deal goes through. But they will likely see some store closures or name changes and fewer brand choices after Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. adds the nation's third-largest drugstore chain to its portfolio.
They also may see more clinics in Rite Aid Corp. stores and more products like vitamins and supplements aimed at keeping them healthy, as the sector continues to stretch well beyond simply filling prescriptions.
All the major drugstore chains - Walgreens, CVS Health Corp., and Rite Aid - have been revamping their stores for the past few years to make them bigger providers of health care products and other services. They're trying to appeal to customers who want to do more one-stop shopping and take advantage of the vast network of stores the chains have built.
Drugstores also are shifting to serve the aging baby boom population and its health needs, as well as the growing number of people who are shopping around more for health care instead of simply visiting their family doctors. And they're fending off competition from grocery chains and big retailers like Wal-Mart that have added thousands of pharmacies to their stores and offer steep discounts on some drugs.
CVS, in fact, is partnering with the retailer Target Corp. to run its in-store clinics and pharmacies.
But Walgreens may have to close hundreds of stores to ease federal regulatory concerns about competition. That will depend on how the deal changes the competitive balance in individual markets.
Even if it closed no stores, there will still be a fair amount of competition in the sector. The Walgreens-Rite Aid combination would only control about 23 percent of the retail drugstore market.
Aside from the big chains, there are still about 22,000 independent pharmacies in the United States, according to the National Community Pharmacists Association. Around half are in rural or undeserved areas, spokesman John Norton said.