Pharmasim free essay sample

Overall we took away two major points: 1) that it is important to consider the product lifecycle in evaluating how to promote businesses and, 2) that the â€Å"Sweet Spot† as a competitive advantage should be the greatest point of consideration when evaluating how to best gain leverage to beat the competition in the minds of consumers. Professor Yang constantly reminded us with every lecture that Marketing is dynamic and encompasses a deeper thought process than generally perceived as it requires constant consideration of infinite variables that affect consumers’ thought processes. The position of Chief Marketing Officer is generally fading across industries however; we find it to be a great necessity. Marketing plans are closely tied to stock prices and â€Å"the bottom line† of costs vs. profits for companies and need a CMO to closely monitor this. The slightest changes in sales tactics could mean immediate growth or likewise, immediate demise of a company. Our Initial Strategy Reviewing the segment, target and position of the company from the case we received, we decided that we would need a few focal points in order to boost our sales. Given the company’s initial competitive position as the brand of over-the-counter relief with the highest brand awareness at 74. 1%, largest market share at 40. 4%, and highest sales of liquid cold medicine at $355 million we agreed that our main focus should be to simply maintain Allround’s position as the leader with full market coverage including all demographics of adults. Allround’s formula was higher than their competitors in alcohol which leads to drowsiness. Some consumers appreciate the sleep aid, while some view it negatively. In order to diversify the product line and accommodate all tastes we wanted to launch a new â€Å"daytime formula† of Allround with lowered alcohol to eliminate drowsiness and leave the original version as a â€Å"nighttime formula†. We knew we would need to allocate a good portion of our expense budget for reports in order to better ascertain what new tactics would be needed each period. Period Zero to One Period One to Two Period Two to Three Period Three to Four Period Four to Five During this Period We decreased the price of our product from$ 5. 5 to$ 5. 29 to be more competitive in compare to our rivals and increased the sales force in chain drugstores and Grocery stores since they were receiving more sales than the other channels. As a result we increased our sales $29 million. Period Five to Six Although the inflation rate was 3. 6% we decide not to make any changes in the price and we kept it as what it was $5. 29. In this period Ethik announced the introduction of End+ which was$ 5. 69 but we still decided to keep our price for Allround+ $4. 99 . The prices of Allround and Allround + should have been increased in correlation to inflation . Our stock price went down from $39. 32 to $35. 14 per share. We purchased sales force, advertising, promotion, channel sales and pricing reports to help us with our decisions in this period. Period Six to Seven In this Period our stock price drastically went down from $35. 14 to$ 25. 61The BCG Matrix which is an analytical tool used to analyze a company product lines (see below) showed that our primary product, Allround, was somewhere between cash cow and dog and our new product, Allround+ was a dog. If we had the chance to redo the Pharmasim simulation we would do the following: 1. First and foremost decided on hard quantitative goals and specifically listed by what percentage we wanted to see our income and stock prices grow. Our goal was to raise the stock price and it was not more specific than that which was a huge mistake. Problems must be outlined with specific expectations and goals in mind in order to tackle them with any game plan. 2. We would take the time to more intensely review Allround’s â€Å"sweet spot† and recognize what leverage we could have gained. We assumed there was no sweet spot that made this commodity stand out drastically from its competitors rather than focus on trying to develop a way to make Allround and Allround+ stand out. 3. We would review all of the available reports each period to help in our decision making. In our team worked too much from our own assumptions about what consumers were thinking as inexperienced Marketing associates for Allround and needed hard statistics, surveys and facts to base our judgments on. We could have benefit greatly from knowing through surveys how consumers were responding to our coupons offered. We blindly spent money on coupons without measuring their effectiveness in boosting sales. 4. We would also better try to understand how to boost Allround, a mature brand, through wiser product placement to remind consumers of its presence and value. We treated every period as though Allround was a new, growing brand and did not focus on how making changes to the shelf space could build dropping sales. 5. We would not have gotten into a price competition with our nearest competitor, Besthelp. We recognized that once we dropped our prices we struggled to pull our profits up, as consumers did not respond well to our volatile pricing that dropped then rose while Besthelp kept their prices more steady in response to inflation. In our growing competition with Besthelp we should not have mimicked their Marketing decisions. In mimicking the competitor BELOW us after seeing their rapid growth, we LOWERED our own results in the process!