Brad Fluegel, Senior Vice President and Chief Healthcare Commercial Market Development Officer for Walgreens, discussed how the trends of personalization, transparency, convenience, and behavioral change will impact the future of retail healthcare and consumerism.

Brad shared that the idea that consumers want what they want, where they want it, when they want it, now applies to healthcare too. Multiple trends are pushing consumerism forward:

1. Personalized messaging is key to gaining traction and share of mind
2. Consumer behavior, and the way that people purchase healthcare products and services is shifting to mobile
3. Price transparency, while not fully developed yet, will give clarity to the options that consumers have
4. Convenience in terms of access and time is critical to gaining the purchase

The empowered healthcare consumer will have many options to fulfill their needs.

Investing in consumer engagement is one way to capitalize on the mix of these trends. Walgreens’ loyalty program is widely used across the nation, which allows the company to track purchasing patterns to learn more about consumer behavior and effective ways to engage consumers. Further, the company can push things like medication adherence and a healthy lifestyle through its app.

At Walgreens, Brad is responsible for all commercial healthcare activities, including sales and contracting, biopharma relationships, retail clinics, clinical affairs, new service development and market planning. Walgreens is the largest drugstore chain in the U.S. with $76 billion of revenue in 2014, more than 8,200 stores and over 400 healthcare clinics. 75% of Americans live within 5 miles of a Walgreens location.