Walgreens Wants To Discover Your “Secret Sauce,” Use It To Inspire Brand Loyalty

To Walgreens, every customer is like a unique snowflake. Except that instead of a snowflake, we’re all filled with different kinds of special sauce, and the company is working hard to find out what yours is. It’s managed to boost its profits by rewarding customers to stay healthy, somewhat of a contradiction for a drug store that sells items to the exact opposite kind of shopper.

Instead of relying on revenues from every sniffling, coughing or otherwise ailing customer, Walgreen’s has posted an 86% increase in profits for the recent quarter, which Business Week says can be partly attributed to its new loyalty program that gives discounts to customers based on how much they exercise.

It’s all about tapping into what makes customers tick, says the company’s execs.

“I think what’s important to us is finding the secret sauce with every customer,” says Walgreen’s Beth Stiller. “Making sure that we know exactly how we can incent every customer to come into our store more often and find what they need more often.”

That includes handing out small coupons to people who visit the store, as well as dangling rewards like $5 off through Steps With Balance Rewards by walking 500 miles, or logging in on the site to earn 20 points.

What does it all boil down to? The more you work at your fitness goals by logging into Walgreens’ activity app, the more connected you might feel to the brand itself. Then when it comes time to buy a new FitBit or some protein powder, where are you going to shop? Walgreens.

That is, if it can figure out your flavor of special sauce first. Mine includes cheese, shh.

How Walgreen Makes Money From Healthier Shoppers [Business Week]

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