What are the benefits of joining a cooperative from a purchasing point of view?
Today’s post is from our SafeSourcing Archives
In this week’s series we have been looking at the retail cooperative and in particular focusing on some of the organizations out there in different market segments and what they are doing to separate themselves from other groups.
Today we are going to be focusing on the Chain Drug Consortium. The CDC is a collective group that represents 1150 retail Drug Stores with over $8 billion in revenue. Its 18 members span the United States and service hundreds of thousands of customers.
Each day the CDC provides its retail members “an innovative savings approach through key purchasing programs and services, which help maximize market opportunities.” Some of the specialized programs the CDC provides it members are detailed below.
Product Lines – The CDC offers two corporate product lines to its members; Premier Value and Premier Traditions. With over 1,800 products that span over the counter medicine, HBC and general merchandise, the Premier Value brand provides its members a huge value in alternatives to National brands at a low cost to them. The Premier Traditions line includes Christmas seasonal items such as lighting and tree products.
Conferences – The larger the cooperative/consortium is the more opportunities to provide members valuable activities such as National Planning Conferences become for the entire group. The CDC provides its members an annual planning conference which allows all of the member presidents an opportunity to present their business strategy and receive high level executive collaboration to build more successful programs. This is a valuable benefit the CDC and other cooperatives can bring their members.
Member Chirp – Through the member portal the CDC provides its members a forum for members to access import program information ranging from seasonal program offerings to latest updates of activity within the organization. This is also a place for the pharmacy members to be able to access national and private brand label pharmaceutical information.
The CDC is just another great example of how a cooperative/consortium can provide great value to members who belong to it and how they can continue to grow with the clients with new and innovative to services and offerings such as aggregated purchases or both product and services.
For more information on the retail industry’s cooperatives, the CDC or how consolidating your purchase activity with other similar companies can benefit you, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.
We look forward to your comments.
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