We all just learned from Walgreens’ latest report that placing barriers between consumers and the goods they’re trying to purchase reduces sales, and CVS’ response to this problem is to add a login requirement.
Easing the ordering process, and a solid return policy, is how Amazon exploded overnight. Study after study showed that people would walk back if the website offered the slightest hassle. Also funny, something like a 1.3s load time difference would send people to competitors.
Do they not teach this shit in business school?!
Not really. They mostly teach “quarterly profit line go up”.
Making sales makes line go up.
It took Valve years to build Steam into the juggernaut it is based on maximizing customer value and minimizing friction. Years! Like multiple of them! Who has time for that! I need my profits this quarter!
As someone who has a BS in Business, yes they taught this in business.
Similarly we had case studies on Wal-mart’s absolute domination of the logistics game which made them a powerhouse in the “before Amazon” times.
Walgreens CEO, “We lost business due to our locked shelves.”
CVS: “Hold my beer.”
I go there in person BECAUSE I don’t want to log in to your stupid website.
Why do people buy anything besides drugs at a CVS?
The strategy for these drug stores was to make themselves the closest option in a lot of neighborhoods. It didn’t work, but they thought it would.
When I worked at night it was the only place open 24 hours. Now the one by me doesn’t even have that going for it.
I went into Walmart yesterday for my annual soap/shampoo/mouthwash bulk purchase as they have the products I like at the best price (in bulk). I got to the section and it was all locked up behind glass…
I turned around and walked right out. No idea where I’m gonna get it from now, but I’m not gonna support that bullshit.
The claims of mass losses due to shoplifting have been proven false multiple times over. These are just racist store policies intended to make you spend more time in their store or to buy online or from mobile apps.
Enshitification keeps on keeping on.
I buy those items from my large grocery store. They have sales too so the goods are fairly priced.
In my old rite aid I saw a bunch of shop lifters stealing goods, but nothing was done about it. Saw it several times. Security lets them leave.
I guess I am starting to be okay with “leaning in” and taking advantage off my “old guy” (false) technical ineptitude and will just pretend to shuffle up to a store employee and ask them to open those cabinets for me
Fuck nope.
lol, no.
CVS and their deliberate, hostile business practices chased me away years ago when I was unable to stop them from auto-refilling prescriptions I did not need. California finally took action against CVS in 2020 after many years of their carefully engineered abuses.
Good to see the company’s crappy behavior continues unabated and there’s no reason to give them another try.
Not just refilling prescriptions automatically, but automatically contacting your doctor to request more refills on your behalf once your normal refills refills ran out. I got a phone call from my doctor’s office once, asking me why I was trying to go around them to get more of something that I was only supposed to be on for a short time. Freaking CVS made me look like I was drug seeking.
I’m waiting for the ultimate reductive customer experience. These drug stores will eventually block off access to the shelves and aisles entirely. Instead, the front point-of-sale area and places where people used to wait in line with their purchases will be turned into a new blocked off large vestibule with floor to ceiling transparent glass. In there (where customers can access) will be kiosks which can control tele-presence robots that will let customers “walk the aisle” to look at product on shelves:
If you want to make a purchase, you press a button on the kiosk and pay for it, then a human worker inside will fetch the item off the shelf for you and drop it in a transaction drawer where you pick up your item:
There used to be a store called Service Merchandise with a similar model. Their floor was just a showroom with one of each item, sort of like a physical catalog. You just grab a ticket to buy stuff and wait for it to come up a conveyor, sort of like airline baggage claim. I always wondered why that model never succeeded: it was so convenient and would be even better now with automation and online shopping, qr codes
I remember Service Merchandise! That conveyor belt delivered magic.
These still exist in Ireland. Argos is a big one.
Let’s go one step further and make them a gig worker so CVS doesn’t have to pay them for downtime and instead we get to tip
then a human worker inside will fetch the item off the shelf for you
Soon enough that robot will complete that whole transaction and the humans will not be needed
lol good luck with that. when they (and rite aid) started locking up their shelves I stopped buying from them.
How about I just shop somewhere else?
There’s not a good reason to do this.
Any money saved by preventing thefts in our dying world will be lost from the customers who don’t want to be treated like thieves.
Like the shoplifters won’t make bogus accounts? Wtf are we even doing here?
What I’m always stunned by, who is fucking stupid enough to shop there?! I go to the pharmacy, get my shit, leave. Even when I had a fat income, I still wouldn’t pay those prices.
Locally, the Winn Dixie is shutting down because the new Publix out competed them. For those not in the know, both are very nice groceries, with Publix a little nicer and way costlier. FFS, we have an Aldi (along with 5 other cheaper groceries) and it’s never as busy as the expensive stores.
Hit a couple of big box stores waiting on my wife. Never go in those places anymore, especially since inflation went nuts the last couple of years. People pay for that crap?! At Pets Mart a chunk of driftwood is between $20 and $50! Y’all, we’re in Florida, paying for driftwood and sand. The mind boggles.
tl:dr; American consumers are idiots and I’m not going to hear the whining about high retail prices.
we have an Aldi (along with 5 other cheaper groceries) and it’s never as busy as the expensive stores.
That might also be related to the fact that Aldi tries to be very efficient with its operation so they might handle more customers but those customers aren’t stuck in the store as long.
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The locked shelves are to block thieves.
Turns out they also block customers.
They’ve turned blocking thieves into an income stream. Consumers will have to let CVS collect their personal data to be allowed to purchase baby formula.
Uh, yeah?
Ask the physical movie and music industries how well that worked out for them.
They got killed by streaming, not locked shelves.
They got killed by making it inconvenient to use legally purchased media by adding unskippable trailers, copy protection, things like the Sony rootkit,… and also empty boxes on the shelves with the actual media hidden behind the counter.
Making life harder for people trying to buy your product is never a good idea.
