Walgreens And Rite-Aid: Dueling Chat Strategies
Written by Evan SchumanAugust 12th, 2010
Within a few days of each other, two of the nation's largest pharmacy chains--Walgreens and Rite-Aid--this month rolled out programs in which their customers can use Internet chat to talk with pharmacists about medical advice 24x7. But each chain opted for a very different approach, with $63 billion Walgreens giving its pharmacist chatters full access to the medical databases on patients across the country while $26 billion Rite-Aid took the more conservative route of limiting chatters to generic advice based on nothing more than what consumers choose to share.
The moves--and different strategies--are especially interesting given how pharmacies today find themselves in arguably the most data-sensitive retail segment. This space has all of the usual retail privacy concerns and regulations, in addition to medical requirements such as the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA).
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Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
Is there really an improvement between a mag swipe and contactless tap if multi-factor authentication is required?
-Ed
