Week 10 Blog Post

Pharmasim Impressions and Observations

Since much of our time lately has been spent working on and discussing our Pharmasim marketing management projects, this week's blog will be entirely devoted to that.  The Pharmasim management process requires a much more in-depth analysis in which it first appears.  When I first introduced myself with the program and began exploring it early in the semester, it seemed pretty self explanatory.  While all the information is in the program, you have to make sure that you purchase all the reports you need to make your future decisions.  Again, all the information is there, but your task is to find what you are looking for, decipher it, and organize it in such a way that you can effectively learn from past decisions, interpret what the competition is doing/pursuing, and analyze consumer behaviors.  I have found it essential to organize all the information in Pharmasim in such a way that you can easily find it and make sense of it.  This technique and style may vary from person to person.

That being said, the situation analysis was not only a major tool to create our marketing plan, but to understand Allround's position in the market.  The tasks in the situation analysis really forced you to dive into Pharmasim and pull out the essential information to analyze the market and help make decisions moving forward.  Just as Drucker said, you cannot predict the future, but you can look at past data to help shape the future.  As mentioned earlier, it is critical to analyze your past decisions, competitors, and consumers when developing a marketing plan, and the situation analysis did just that.

Working together in a team has made the project much more manageable, but I believe a much better result would come from larger teams.  The more insights and analyses would make for a better perspective of the market place, and more eyes could find more opportunities and threats within the market.  Out Pharmasim team only has two team members, and our key issues and goals from our situation analysis were essentially identical.  While it seemed obvious what our issues were, it does not mean that we chose to attack the correct things moving forward.  A few more sets of eyes could give more perspective and help find other avenues to pursue if necessary.

The most important decision our team has made thus far deals with our pricing strategy.  As we discussed in class, prices are elastic, and net income is not always related to unit sales.  The challenge for our team was to find that "ideal price".  For some reason, we felt as though we needed to drop the price of Allround during Period 3 to increase sales.  The plan worked for increasing unit sales, but it negatively affected manufacturer's sales and net income.  Our goal and challenge moving forward was to find the right price for Allround that would optimize net income, and therefore implement a premium pricing strategy.  We did so during Period 4, and saw much improved results, allowing us to raise our capacity and open up a new plant.  We then continued to raise the price but watched net income fall again, so we realized we needed to stick closer to Period 4's pricing strategy, and move forward keeping it in-line with the rate of inflation.

Two incidents in which I found most interesting were the social media and increasing awareness of Allround amongst physicians and pharmacists.  I found the social media incident interesting because it is has rapidly become such a huge aspect to marketing now, and throughout the periods, issues seem to arise throughout, making it important to always keep a handle on your social media relations.  The incident in which you had multiple options to raise awareness of Allround amongst physicians and pharmacists intrigues me as well because it was one of our goals for Periods 4-7 to have physicians and pharmacists recommend Alround more than any other product.  We decided on the most expensive option, the clinical trials to help prove to physicians and pharmacists that it was the most effective product on the market.  For some reason, this did not prove effective, and a waste of funds.  I am curious as to the most effective choice of raising recommendations from the physician and pharmacists in Pharmasim, as we still feel it is an important component to effectively marketing Allround