Thursday will be a watershed day for one of Butler County’s most prominent retailers. All of us should pay attention to the outcome.

The Rite Aid pharmacy chain, with nine stores in the county, is considering a merger with the Albertsons grocery conglomerate. On Thursday, Rite Aid shareholders will vote whether or not to accept a $24 billion buyout bid from the Idaho grocery conglomerate Albertsons.

Three days before the vote, Rite Aid slashed its annual earnings forecast from 2 to 6 cents per share to somewhere between break-even and a loss of 4 cents per share. The maneuver caused an immediate 10 percent reduction in the price of Rite Aid stock shares and cast doubt on the advice of two prominent advisory firms — Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis & Co. — for shareholders to reject the offer and hold onto their stock. One analyst called the pending vote a “lose, lose” scenario for the company and its investors.

The fly in Rite Aid’s ointment is the anticipation of stiff competition from one particular online marketer — Amazon. While Rite Aid has invested in palatial stores in recent years, including one on Main Street in Butler and another on Route 8 in Center Township, Amazon has invested heavily in a delivery system that gets goods to consumers with unprecedented efficiency and low cost.

Rite Aid said it changed its outlook after realizing that reductions in the cost of generic drugs are coming in about $80 million lower than the company expected when it established its fiscal 2019 forecast. Generic drugs are cheaper copycats of older, branded pharmaceuticals, and they make up most of a drugstore’s prescription volume. It was more than coincidence that only one month earlier, Amazon announced that it was buying the online pharmacy PillPack with intentions of taking over the online pharmacy market.

Regardless of the outcome of Thursday’s vote, here’s how the community should regard its relationship with a company like Rite Aid and its nine locations in Butler County:

- Online pharmacies offer cheap drugs. Hometown pharmacies offer expertise, service and advice.

- The value of a pharmacist’s knowledge should not be taken for granted — not by a community or the pharmacy that employs her or him.

- An online pharmacy is not going to help a young parent with a teething infant, or an older adult with any of a number of embarrassing chronic ailments.

- Rite Aid has introduced RediClinic service in some of its stores. It involves “board-certified clinicians (who) collaborate with local physicians to treat common medical conditions and provide preventive care on a walk-in basis, at clinics located inside select Rite Aid stores. RediClinic staff treats more than 30 conditions such as strep throat, ear infections, urinary tract infections, pink eye and skin rashes.”

Rite Aid would do well to keep a clear focus on its objectives and to articulate with clarity to shareholders and customers where the path to their future is taking them — with or without Albertsons in the picture.