Marketing Plan for Pharmasim

A) Executive Summary The management squad at the over-the-counter unheated medicine (OCM) group of Allstar Brands is get wording to utilize revenue generated by Allround to suspensor fund unexampled opportunities in emerging foodstuffs. Therefore, it is critical that Allround maintain its commercialize-leading position in terms of food food commercialise shargon, profitability, and gross revenue in coif to fund these spic-and-span initiatives. While Allround is a leader in steel knowingness and dirt most frequently leveragingd, there be nates competitors to Allround.These competitors offer various returns from general a ratty medicine flings to exclusive-use medicines. It is likely that these companies go out campaign to develop new offerings in that atomic number 18na to entertain great coverage across different segments. To defend against these moves, the Allround inciter must fatten its creese, and introduce new crossroadions to the market. This award provide an additional argona for leave alone and revenue, allow the company to use the strong brand recognition to help launch the new products, and gibe that the product lineup is meeting menstruum consumer trends and makes.Our sales strong point works with the stemmas hatfuld retailers/ r each(prenominal) stores ( hold sales) or with wholesalers/retailers (indirect sales) to encounter prominent product placement. Our sales gouge to a fault works to maintain relationships with the disclose finis makers at each of these channels. If these relationships be damaged, there is a direct encounter to sales and therefore profitability. Our outlined selling plan lead work to strengthen these relationships and allow for a dialog with the channels that go away be invaluable for our organization.It is evident that Allstar Brands of necessity a detailed marketing plan in order to positively progress in the future. Outlined below be the attain areas in a marketing pl an as sound as suggestions for achieving our marketing objectives. B) Situation and Environment Analysis SWOT Analysis Strengths Allround has the advancedest brand conscious(predicate)ness of any opposite competitor. Allround has the highest market share based on sales revenue for otc medicine. Allstar is the market leader in the cold alleviate market. Weaknesses Allround has a low customer retention rate compared to some another(prenominal) competitor brands. Allstars current product offering only niduses on the cold category, which is a small portion of the tot purchasable market. Allstar has a small sales force to lift its product. Only 14% of total marketing expenses allocated to sales force. Product placement in stores is not optimal. Allround contains alcohol, which is a spot effect that consumers dislike. Allstar has only one product on the market. Consumer discernment is leading to envelop form, and most competitors already supplying in capsule for m.Opportunities Allstar has the ability to tap into another segment of the market by offering a brand extension, such as the cough or allergic reaction segments. -Allstar has the ability to add brand extensions that fit customer postulate. -Allstar hobo channelise the alcohol from its product line. Threats -Consumers perceive alcoholic content in OTC medication negatively. -Other OTC competitors are receiving high doctor suggestations than Allround. -Allround has a inflict customer retention rate compared to other competitor brands. Allstar is only management on the cold category, which makes up a small portion of the available market. -Product placement in stores not optimum compared to competition. -Introduction of new products by competitors bay window erode Allstars market share. Competitors CompanyAllstarB&BEthikDriscolCompetitor Summary Brand NameAllroundBesthelpExtraDryup Market Segment tattyAllergy/ColdCough/Cold/NasalAllergy/Nasal/ColdDiversified in other market se gments Product4-hr multi symptom cold liquid4-hr cold capsule12-hr cold capsule4 hr multi-symptom cold capsuleAll cold medicine in capsule form Price$5. 9$4. 89$4. 49$5. 09Lower MSRP unit set for competitors Market share40. 4%25. 2%19. 5%14. 9%59. 6% overlap Cold Sales Revenue$355M$222M$172M$131M$525M Total Sales$355M$286M$395M$255M$936M/$1491(63%) % of Business tie in to Cold Sales100%78%44%51% Cold Sales $s Period 0$355M$222M$172M$130M$879M Total Allstars major competitors are B&B, Ethik, and Driscol. All competitors of Allstars are diversified into other categories of the OTC market and not dependent upon just the cold segment. This is one area where Allstar washbowl voltagely improve its sales and diversify its product lines.Although Allstar has the highest brand awake(predicate)ness, it overly has the highest outlay amongst competitors. The fact that Allround has a strong reputation in the market place due to the product stiffness allows Allround to maintain a high b ell than its competition. All other competitors supply its OTC in capsule form, which is the preferred method of consumption by consumers. Allstar must be aware of the various formulations of the competitors, be selective in check out to iting new products to market, and pay caution to newly offered products and the markets the competitors are scratching.The Allstar team shoots to reassess the strategy and lift each outcome based upon competitor info mend maintaining the long strategic objectives. Economics Allstar must superintend the economic conditions when deciding the sequester calculate allocations to advertising, sales force, promotional material, and discounts. Inflation is a major influential figure that can appropriate total determine and the make ups of goods sold, which depart demand the companys bottom line. In order to sustain good pricing, Allstars marketing team must monitor inflation and deflation in the market place to determine the optimum pricing strategy.Allstar must slump its pricing to reflect inflation assess in the market as this entrust have a negative impact to net income, as costs depart lapse to rise. Social/Cultural Allstar must focus on the needs of its customers and monitor any miscellanys in the behaviors of its consumers. One cipher to consider is the substance of medication in Allround and the perceptions of docs and consumers. Obtaining recommendations from the health check community is important to the success of the product, as some consumers apprise the advice from physicians.Some doctors may not recommend Allround because of the alcohol content or that the multi-symptom formulation contains too much medicine. Our team must decide the best formulations of OTC medications that meet the needs of the consumers while at the kindred conviction satisfy the medical community in terms of medicinal content and brand effectiveness. Allstar must similarly consider motivational factors to get c onsumers to continue to barter for our products and the appropriate sales force and incentives to motivate the sales force to promote our brand.Some consumers are motivated to purchase based upon coupons. Motivational factors vary for the various sales channels large grocery stores, mass merchandisers, and chain drugstores are incentivized by turnover and allowances, and indie drugstores by the number of sales people on the account. Allstar must ensure the appropriate allocation and combination of promotion and sales force to ensure our product gets the optimum attention and exposure. Political/LegalThe Food and Drug administration (FDA) regulates the amount of medication that can be contained in a single dose and the frequency in which a consumer should consume the dosage. In selecting new products, the Allstar marketing team must select products that go away avert potential take a chances for the company. Selecting a product that has not received FDA approval could delay tim e to market and miss a potential sales window. Introducing a product to the market that has higher than average the recommended ingredients could be a potential risk should the FDA impose stricter regulations on the amount of ingredients.The team testament pay airless attention to the formulations offered before introducing these to the market place, scrutinize the ingredient type and amount of medication in each, and assess the risk associated to the potential regulation of the product. innate Environment Climate change is an ongoing relate and can affect the weather patterns and temperature fluctuations, which can affect the health of the population as a whole. Changes in climate could potentially ontogenesis or decrease the demand for OTC products. The team must monitor symptoms of consumers and offer products that meet the needs of the consumers.Currently, the most reported symptoms are aches, chest congestion, and coughing. The reported symptoms could potentially change ov er time and Allstar needs to take into consideration potential changes that could turn over based upon changing environmental factors. Technological Allstar is C) Marketing Objectives Allstars long-term marketing objectives are 1)Increase market share 10%+ 2)Increase net income every year by 20+ (annual growth) 3)Increase customer satisfaction to at least 60% 4)Increase consumer brand awareness to at least 85%The team go out also evaluate results at the end of each effect via the surgical process summary report and adjust the short-term strategy via the various enter elements marketing strategy, marketing mix, pricing, promotion, sales force allocation, address markets and channels. Overall, we go out cleave to our long-term plan to achieve our long-term objectives. D) Target Market antecedent to determining the best way to market our product, we needed to identify our draw a bead on market of consumers. In doing so, we sought to identify and profile distinct groups of bu yers who faculty prefer our product over our competitions product.Based on this, we aligned our advertising and promotion accordingly. When analyzing the market research, we noticed that little families, climb on families, empty nesters, and retired individuals accounted for over cardinal percent of the cold, cough, and allergy market. Additionally, as Allround treats several(prenominal) different symptoms, it can be appealing to a large market with varying symptoms. Because of this, we use this demographic variable to identify our market. For psychographic considerations, the interests and opinions of the prat market were considered. For example, we did not initially derriere young families.The original formulation of Allround included alcohol as an ingredient. referable to this ingredient, we did not market to young families for fear of an unintentional backlash from this demographic. We were aware that young parents would not approve a pharmaceutical company marketing a co ld medicine with alcohol as an ingredient to buyers with young children. When we were able to reformulate our product, we remote the alcohol from Allrounds composition, and added young families to our target market. Another factor we noticed when analyzing the market research was an interest in the effectiveness of the product.We observed that members of our target market (young families, acquire families, empty nesters and retirees) were in the main concerned with the effectiveness of a medicine, and had a smaller amount of concern for the price of the product. In other words, we deducted that members of this market group had the socio-economic background that would allow them to purchase a higher priced cold medicine if it was proven to be effective. By including both young and mature families in our target market, we taked we would see an extend in usage. By nature, colds and coughs are contagious.Families living in approximate quarters are likely to share colds, and theref ore increase the need for cold medicine. This was another significant variable we analyzed when identifying our target market. Also, negligible side effects is an appealing attribute of our medication. Both young and mature families have many working parts, and we believe we can effectively target this group by touting our reduced side effects that allow families to go about on their daily routines. Geographic considerations involved reviewing the shopping habits of the target group. We sought to analyze where customers are going to purchase our product.According to the research, our target market shops predominately at grocery stores for cold and cough medicine. Because of this, we provide geographically target our market at grocery stores. E) Positioning For value positioning, we are considering several factors to best position our product. We are pleased with the effectiveness of our product in regards to symptom break. We believe that this give increase value in our product, and result in more satisfied customers. This result also lead to borrow purchases from happy customers, and will increase the likelihood for customers to purchase other Allround products.This will allow us to introduce new Allround products to the market. For positioning in regards to pricing, we are seeking to find the delicate balance between price and customer-perceived value. As Allround has a large portion of market share, we can factor in high account book of sales in our pricing plan. Higher volume sales can lead to a reduced unit cost and overall, more significant profits in the long term. Because our customers view our product as effective in regards to cold symptoms, we can increase the price a bit to reinforce the notion that Allround may be a little more expensive but overall, it is worth the slightly higher price.Factors also use to determine the price positioning of Allround will also include our competitions pricing, customer satisfaction, and overall brand awaren ess. As line extensions are introduced, we will elect to use either a market acumen or skimming strategy, depending on the product and target market. The strategy used in the future will be determined after an in-depth analysis of the market and evaluation of the new produce. For Allrounds advertising in regards to positioning, we will continue to increase the advertising budget.This will allow Allround to remain on the high-end value side of the market while simultaneously keeping pace with our competitors. Allround is in the mature stage, so the advertising message will focus on monitor lizard messages. The reminder message will be used to chevy repeat purchases and serve as a reminder that Allround is the superior cold medicine. For Allrounds promotion in regards to positioning, we will devote a portion of our budget only when needed. Times when our promotional budget will increase will likely be if there is a decrease in Allrounds market share, or to combat a competitors new product.When Allround introduces a line extension, we will not devote the volume of our advertising budget to promote it. Rather, we will aim for a low to medium advertising expense, and carefully direct our message. Line extension advertising will be informative in an effort to create awareness of the product. It will also be used to highlight the relationship the product has with Allround. Because Allround is a leader in the market with heightened brand awareness and consumer confidence, the relationship with Allround can be used to our advantage.When Allround introduces a brand new product, we will use a medium to high advertising expense. The new product will be in the origin stage in its product vitality cycle, so advertising will need to be used more. The advertising message for new products will be informative, seek to help customers form a preference for the new product, and reassure customers that the new product is as good as Allround though advertising strategies vary for Allround, line extensions and new products, we will use the equivalent channel decision strategy for all products. This strategy will be used regardless of the products vivification cycle stage.We will maintain a channel sales force according to demand for the products. When a channel segment is experiencing growth, we will increase the amount of sales force defend at these locations. For Allround, these high-volume sales channels are grocery stores and chain drug stores thus far. Because of this, we have allocated more salesmen at these channels. Our strategy is to continue to monitor the train of sales at the different channels, and increase sales force at channels where sales are growing and/or have the potential for large amounts of growth.F) Product Currently, the Allround brand has the highest brand awareness and rebirth ratio amongst its competitors. Consumers view the brand positively and it has the highest market share in OTC cold medicine. The main emphasis on th e product is the brands effectiveness over the various categories and limited side effects. The medical community is recommending products that do not produce side effects. For this reason, the team has do the decision to market products that do not contain alcohol. Product PositioningAllstars value proposition to consumers is to offer products that will meet all their cold medication needs, providing high-quality products with multi-symptom relief without adverse side effects. We feel that with the reputation of the Allround brand, consumers are willing to pay for a high-quality product that meets his or her needs. We will underline the following four key areas 1. High Quality Product/ competitive Price Offer products that are high quality and at a competitive price to maximize net income up to the point that consumers will tolerate. . Product Benefits Offer products that will meet the needs of the consumer from a multi-symptom persuasion that will make them satisfied with our p roducts and motivate them to repurchase. 3. Product Differentiation Multi-symptom event compared to competitors, such as, Besthelp 4. Side Effects Offer products that minimize negative side effects, such as removing alcohol content to gain more physician recommendations. G) Price The pricing strategy will rely upon the following key factors 1)Inflation/Deflation 2)Consumer purchase decision criteria )Balancing the look atoff between price and symptom relief 4)Analysis of competitor pricing / competitor product offering / historical pricing We will monitor the tradeoff graph in the PharmaSim module each period to ensure that we are pricing the product close to the optimal line (price vs. symptom relief). Thus far, we have learned that we need to continue increasing our prices to keep up with inflation and make some manual modifications to the price depending on the previous periods price increase while monitoring what is happening in the future period regarding the economic factor s.Consumers purchase decision criteria will be the one of the main decision factors in determining how we price our product each period. We determined that the key element in the consumer purchasing decision is product effectiveness for Allround, which we can measure by customer satisfaction. We need to ensure that our product has the highest level of customer satisfaction each period. By linking customer satisfaction with functioning-based pricing, we believe we will be successful. Since products offered are at different stages of the product life cycle, we will position the pricing appropriately for each product.As Allround is in the mature stage, we will take advantage of the consumer faithfulness and try to maintain an optimum price to reap benefits from this product line to help with the financing of other product introductions. We will price new products competitively using penetration pricing based upon where the competitors are in the market and once consumer loyalty and m arket presence are established, we will increase the pricing to an optimal level as to maximize net income, while continuing to increase our market share. H) Promotion For Allround, we plan to use a combination of push and pull strategies.For the most part, we will use a pull strategy for Allround as the product is in the mature lifecycle and we need to continue to give notice (of) and contribute funds to the consumer promotion budget using trial sizes, coupons, points of purchase, and batting cage advertising. Our push strategies will include our sales force to help promote the brand and detailers to help obtain recommendations from the medical community. We will use trade allowances as a way of enticing the sales channels to buy at the higher volume by decreasing the lowest volume discount and increasing the highest volume discount.When introducing new products, we will use the same trade allowances as Allround and decrease the discounts once the new products establish a market presence over future periods. We believe that this strategy will help us achieve higher unit sales, as we will entice the channels to buy at the larger volumes as they will benefit from a larger discount. As the new products mature, we will little by little decrease the volume discount to maximize our net income. In period 4, we decided to allocate 70% of all funds to Allround and 30% to Allround+.As the majority of the sales are still with Allround and the product is still Allstars moneymaker, we did not want to allocate too many funds into the new brand Allround+. As we introduce other products, we will establish a long-term strategy of allocating funds as follows to our product line Allround40% Allround+30% Allright30% publicise For Allround, we will use various advertising messages depending where we are in the product cycle. We initially will focus on benefits and reminder advertising, as well as continue to use comparative advertising against Besthelp.On new products, our s trategy will focus on heavy primary and benefit, with some comparative advertising. As the product ages, we will place emphasis from primary to benefits and reminder advertising. For Allround, the advertising message is Relieves Aches, Clear Nasal Congestion, Reduces Chest Congestion, Suppresses Cough, Minimizes Side Effects, and wint Cause Drowsiness. We added Wont Cause Drowsiness when we removed the alcohol from Allround and got rid of Dries Up Runny Nose as we already have a message of Clear Nasal Congestion, which could be confusing to consumers.I) Place ( dissemination) The period zero sales report shows that direct distribution channels are almost twice as much as indirect distribution channels (direct distribution channels account for 63. 4% of sales, while indirect distribution channels account for 36. 7% of sales). Because of this, we will prioritize direct channels for our distribution. The direct channel sales are motivated by volume discount and promotional allowance s these two factors impact overall shelf space for Allround.Volume discount and promotional allowance are factors for indirect channels as well, so we will use this information in our marketing mix with regards to promotion. We will adjust these volume discounts and promotional allowances after each period to correspond with channel growth rates and sales. J) Evaluation and Control We will employ various methods to evaluate our performance after each period. We determined that an in-depth analysis after each period is essential to maintain our product as a leader in the market. The company dashboard and performance summary will serve as primary tools in this analysis.This is where we will gather information regarding our marketing strategy, mix, promotions, sales force and price we will use this information to compare how effective we were in achieving the marketing goals aforementioned. Another method we will use to evaluate our performance is by analyzing the percentage of changes in each of our decision points. For example, we will calculate the percentage of growth in our sales force, our product price and our advertising budget. We will then cross-reference these calculations with our overall performance in the period.An increase in price of 3. 5% may cause a negative trend in our market share because of this, we will look to adjust our price to better capture market share. By playacting similar calculations and comparative analysis, we hope to identify any positive or negative trends and adjust accordingly. While changes will occur, our overall marketing mount will not change drastically. We will adjust as our line is extended and new products are launched due to differences in the marketing life cycle of each product, but the core of our marketing strategy will remain relatively unchanged.