Pharmacies might kind of feel like an afterthought, depending on where you go to pick up your medications, since they’re often located at the back of a store.
But they’re quite big business.
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“For 2024, total prescription dispensing revenues for retail, mail, long-term care, and specialty pharmacies reached $683 billion (excluding COVID-19 vaccines),” the 2025 Economic Report on U.S. Pharmacies and Pharmacy Benefit Managers found.
“Anti-obesity GLP-1 agonist drugs remained the most significant driver of prescription revenue at retail pharmacies, accounting for more than 80% of dispensing revenue growth for 2024.”
But sometimes it can be hard to differentiate between pharmacies.
Most give you access to more or less the same brands or medications.
And most have similar layouts, services, and offerings.
Certain pharmacies are easier to access
But according to J.D. Power’s 2025 U.S. Pharmacy Study, customers actually preferred some pharmacies over others.
The study examined the following metrics and measured stores across the U.S.
- Staff adequacy
- Trust in pharmacists
- Ease of ordering prescriptions
- Speed of filling prescriptions
Supermarkets, for example, when customers chose where they preferred to access their pharmacies.
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This makes sense, since it’s often far more convenient to pick up a prescription while you’re grocery shopping than it is to make the extra stop at a standalone drugstore.
Image source: John Moore/Getty Images
Most popular pharmacies in 2025
The top pharmacies based on overall customer satisfaction, according to the J.D. Power 2025 U.S. Pharmacy Study are:
- Wegmans
- Publix
- H-E-B
- Walmart Neighborhood Market
- Stop & Shop
- Shoprite
But Sam’s Club, which is owned by Walmart (WMT) , edged out Costco (COST) for customer satisfaction.
Customers prefer supermarkets to standalone drugstores
“Chain drug store customers are significantly more likely than supermarket or mass market merchandiser pharmacy customers to say they ‘definitely will’ or ‘probably will’ switch pharmacies in the next 12 months,” J.D. Power global healthcare intelligence managing director Christopher Lis said.
“That openness to switching, combined with steadily increasing satisfaction scores at mail order pharmacies, helps set the stage for a tipping point in the pharmacy space.”
Satisfaction scores for different kinds of drugstores were:
- Chain drug stores: 643
- Mail order pharmacies: 697
- Mass market merchandisers: 706
- Supermarkets: 715
Sam’s Club edges out Costco
For the 10th year in a row, Sam’s Club actually edged out Costco for customer satisfaction.
Sam’s Club received a 778 ranking for the brick-and-mortar mass merchandiser pharmacy category.
Costco, on the other hand, received a 765, which puts it in a close second place.
Walmart has indicated it’s trying to stand up the best possible customer experience in its pharmacies, noting they serve as big opportunities.
It just stood up a massive prescription processing facility outside of Washington, D.C. in Frederick, Maryland to serve over a dozen states in the U.S.
“This facility represents the next chapter in how we care for our customers,” Kevin Host, SVP of Walmart pharmacy, said. “With greater efficiency behind the scenes, our pharmacists can spend more time in front of patients — offering expert guidance, building trust and delivering better health outcomes.”