Firm Analysis:
Introduction
Every industry on the planet operates and runs on some fundamental business rules and laws. These also dictate how a single firm would operate within that industry. These guidelines need to be properly understood and assessed if one is to understand the functions of a firm and how do these laws affect the functionality. This paper would be looking into the pharmaceutical industry from a global perspective and then Pfizer will be aimed to be analyzed based on two different aspects. Understanding the impact of these themes, per se, would immensely help a person to grasp properly how a firm runs and to understand what needs to be done to achieve success. This knowledge can highly benefit anyone who is running a business.
The global pharmaceutical industry is one of the largest business industries and is roughly worth $300 billion. The industry broadly includes everything from medicines, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and equipments as well as medicines that areas old over the counter. Since the first medical shop that was run by Arab medical practitioners, thousands of years back, modern medical technology has come a long way and it is a bigger business industry than it ever was. Today, few industries require scientific research and development as much as this industry. Pfizer is the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world, with estimated $45,708 million sales in 2014.
Theme 1: Branding
Among the many aspects of running a business successfully, marketing is one of the most important ones. There is no point in manufacturing any product unless the consumers know about it and buy the product. Marketing helps a company by making sure the commodities that are sold by the firm are get the proper exposure in the market. Branding is one important aspect of marketing, upon which the true fundamental needs of marketing revolve. Proper branding of a firm’s products ensures consumer loyalty. This means customers buy a specific product from a specific firm. Branding can help companies to retain a good customer base, which in turn ensures a stable profit level all year around. Branding of a company, in turn, rests on many other parameters which also decide how would a firm react to the market requirement and how the marketing strategies be fixed based upon the prevailing situations.
Branding depends on consumer choice or preferences, aims to get premium commodities and loyalty to a specific company.
Principles of branding
Brand value is a very important driver behind strategizing marketing schemes. This is one of the two basic principles of branding, along with relationship with the marketing department of the firm. Branding is a business asset and encompasses different aspects of business operations, which can be the point of difference between a successful firm and another that is not. Brand is considered to be something those surfaces on the mind of the customer when any specific product is being talked about. When any goods are thought about by a customer, a specifically branded product of a specific company pops inside the mind of the consumer. Brand is solely made up of the promise that the product will meet the customer’s needs and deliver an experience. These values prompt an individual to buy the product from the same manufacturer. The value that is obtained by a company from branding is the collective earning that is generated by the intangible earnings and brand index implications. The strength of a company’s brand name in the market also decides how much market share can the firm capture. Brand value is decided on scale that determines how much does the brand name influence an individual’s decisions. If the brand name does not influence much, then the brand value is thought to be negligible, whereas, if the brand name is the key driver of an individual’s buying decisions, then the brand value is on the higher side of the scale.
Many other things decide the strength of the brands. Brand strength can be attributed to two key measures: internal and external.
c)The brand should be consistent in producing quality products that meet market demands.
Like every other asset of a firm, a brand is also an asset and needs to be properly managed. The right combinations of leadership, consistency and clarity can concoct the perfect formula to help a brand become successful to no ends. The brand’s purposes need to be clearly charted out and made sure that every employee goes by the principles of the company. The brand’s purpose should be the company’s take on how their product change would or affect the world or market needs. Brand image is something that is embedded within the collective mind of an organization.
Tools of branding
A number of qualitative and quantitative tools are used for branding a product and withhold the brand name in the market.
As the qualitative aspect of the brand, the brand purpose has to be defined clearly, both to the employees of the company as well as the targeted audience. The core values of the brand and the organization as a whole: motivating the customers, the competitive advantage that the brand has in the market and the future predictions all act as major contributors. The core values of the firm are decided after the stakeholders are interviewed and their suggestions are all taken into consideration. Workshops to develop the brand image are essential. Trend reports, desk researchers can be useful indicators to motivate the customers. These reports also act as the basis of future predictions for the firm’s brand. Consumer reviews, audits of other companies help a firm to understand the position of its firm in the market.
Among the other tools that a firm uses to enhance the brand value a number of things can be identified. Designing of a brand can be the key difference point. How a brand looks from the outside matters immensely. Consumers need to be attracted simply by the design of the product at the first glance. A firm should also know where to sell its brand: which place would ensure maximum business. Moderating and changing, even saliently controlling, consumer behavior and perceptions simply based on design is something pivotal for a brand to succeed in the market. After sales services is something that greatly decides the fate of a brand in the market. Brands that have good consumer relations and tend to reciprocate the needs of the customers after the product is sold, are seen to have better market shares and more established brand weight in the market than their competitors.
Taking a specific firm: Pfizer
Pfizer uses a range of marketing tools to make sure that their brand name holds command in the industry, which also includes strategies to help the firm profit more.
The firm employs professional who excel in communication techniques to help the company with the daily communication pieces. Design agencies tie up with Pfizer to create intriguing marketing plans and advertisements that help the brand of the company to be exposed to the consumers. The Pfizer logo stands for the company’s values and every measure is taken to ensure those values are rightly portrayed to the customers. A lot of effort is put into the making of this logo, which represents the company values and beliefs on how would the products of the company influence and change the world to something better. The company’s timeline is the perfect representation of what the company believes that needs to be done in order to make a better world.
Even though Pfizer produces medicines that have many substitutes in the market, the firm gains a competitive advantage by making sure that their customers understand that the firm provides better products than their competitors of the industry do. Every product of the firm has some distinct features and characteristics that help product differentiation and the consumers know what benefits they would be getting by buying the medical products of this company.
The firm also employs strategic marketing to promote their brand in the market, which promises the maximum exposure so that more people opt for their products. In addition, by being consistent with their product quality and post sales services, the firm can maintain a healthy customer base that are loyal to the brand and this helps the firm to run the business throughout the year. All the research that is done by the research department of the company is advertised so that the people know what new technologies are being used and what do they do and also how do they benefit them.
Evaluating the current condition of Pfizer in accordance with the abrupt increase in customer expectations regarding the deliverables, there is a significant opportunity for Pfizer to grow and expand their concerns across the retail market. Furthermore, this considerable opportunity of growth can be characterized across several channels underlying within the market that consolidates the prevalent hierarchy in order to retain the product integrity across the markets. This relative advantage of Pfizer enables the enterprise to enter into the alternate target markets with diverse frontiers. The latest brand strategy that Pfizer have acquired in order to answer this modification of absolute objectives, the respective medicine retail has decided to introduce a concept of ‘family of brands’ that is obliged to serve the customers across a diverse segment of markets.
They have devised the corresponding infrastructural architecture in order to support this design with prudent and effective structural framework. This, according to the ambition of Pfizer, might create an insightful introspection in order to facilitate the analysis of the prevalent market so as to initiate a radical evolution of deliverables in the advent of technological expertise. Apart from that, the management of Pfizer is adamant to consolidate their prevalent brand reputation simply by introducing a dimension of innovation in their faculties of merchandising and packaging. Moreover, they have also emphasized in the aspects of distribution through the virtual channels in order to answer to the leasing customer requirements. It is expected that it will generate an immediate impact in the prevalent market of food retail since this leap in the recent ambience will enable the respective enterprise to formulate their strengths and to establish their philosophy across a diverse range of potential customers.
In addition, major emphasis is put on the designing of the logo and the fonts of the brand logo. This is done in such a way that people are instantly attracted by the logo and the timeline. The firm understands the importance of logo and this propels the company to put a lot of effort into it. The logo of the company is an asset of the firm and every step is taken to protect it against legal issues and other possibilities. The packagings of the pharmaceutical products are done efficiently as product delivery is one of the determinants of good brand image in an industry. Being consistent with their services and products has given the company a huge brand name in the industry and a very loyal customer base has been formed.
Pfizer also targets specific audience according to their products and this audience selection is done based on minute and extensive market surveys and customer reviews are assessed and evaluated. All the stakeholders of the company are reviewed and their inputs are all taken into account and the best suggestions are implemented as the marketing department sees fit. The marketing tools are all applied in ways, which establish the firm brand image and logo as a force to be reckoned with in the industry.
As Pfizer is planning to expand the existing retail while shifting their interest towards the alternative market targets, this current scenario will allow the respective enterprise toreinvigorate their offerings. This process will encourage Pfizer to redesign their brand and add extra features to ensure the protection of the intangible properties. In this course of massive renovation, they also appear determined to impart a distinct look and arrangement all around the retail to consolidate their prevalent brand reputation by retaining the prevalent customer base. On that note, Pfizer have decided to switch to evidence-based marketing in order to exude vehement values on confidence, comfort and control. This immediate brand advantage advocates the concern to focus on the spot of retail. Based on that, it can be expressed that the packaging has become less plastic and the dedication is hovering around the specific user-needs.
In this course of enhancing brand reputation, Pfizer has agreed on the fact that they need to improve the embedded connection with alternate distributors in order to characterize and ensure the positive engagement in the market. In order to facilitate that, Pfizer have started to purchase from the incumbent distributors since that can be served as a valid evidence of their increase in involvement in the existing market. This can also enable the respective organization to earn a substantial share across the entire market while enjoying the immediate sales growth. This can be a exaggeration to admit that this considerable alterations in the strategic measures driven by the intent to enhance the existing brand image of Pfizer will eventually herald the organization towards relative competitive advantage in this volatile ambience of medicine retail while sustaining the prevalent customer base at a higher proportion than ever.
Weakness
Apart from the positive status, that ensures the competitive advantage of Pfizer, one of the key weaknesses in the quarters of branding is an immense apathy towards the campaigning of the products. The absence of viable graphical clues makes their advertising campaign ineffective and that is why Pfizer is undergoing a sheer decline in brand recognition, which eventually succumbs the enterprise to fail in terms of generating desired sales figures. Consequently, this significant lack in capital restricts Pfizer to invest in the opportunities of growth.
Recommendation
Since it is an imperative criterion to impart significant vehemence in the advertising campaigning section in order to proliferate the prevalent brand reputation, Pfizer can be recommended to work on that. On that note, they can be suggested to device a proper advertising mechanism that has the potential to address the prevalent customer base while imparting a considerable attention in the alternative marketing section. In order to acquire a new customer base with new frontiers and challenging expectations, it is imperative for Pfizer to transmit their absolute objectives along with the alternatives in order to formulate the desired image to the customers.
Fig: Guidelines to Branding
Source: Self-generated
Theme 2: Entrepreneurial Ventures
The essence of entrepreneurship is to devise and implement a specific business idea within personal quarters. In order to initiate the fresh business idea, the executive must research on the viable ingredients of the new marker idea. The research is mainly done in order the derive and explore the possibilities of the embedded business idea and to some extent it is imperative to conduct the research suite since it directly advocates the strategic unit among the faculties. The constitutive phases of every fresh entrepreneurship venture usually resemble regardless the nature of the business or the nature of industry it is dealing with. It is impossible to particularize some of the creative business venture ideas under an elegant and universal apprehension since it can only be evaluated through a systematically constructed analytical framework in the premises of the respective expertise.
The results of these analytical frameworks pertain considerable possibilities to differ since all the immediate outcomes are strictly dependant on the respective industries and specific domain of expertise. Moreover, this particular type of business enables the executive to obtain the direct feedback of the potential subscribers of the specific business concepts. The fundamental essence of entrepreneurship is to promote or transmit an unique and innovative financial enterprise or a systematically established network of organizations in order to acquire growth and generate stable financial revenue while experiencing considerable risks or uncertainty. This venture of constructing new enterprise or network of enterprises can be aligned with a sheer opportunity of generating a business idea that may eventually herald itself to flourish.
Risk propensity
According to many celebrated scholars associated with this discipline it is more of a product of a creative and fastidious mindset. Encouragement of the respective of start-up requires few relative competitive advantages which can be achieved simply by performing some conventional tasks in an utterly non-conventional manner. The moral incorporation of higher values in mundane everyday tasks draw value and attention of both the individual and the cumulative faculty within the mentioned organization. Moral obligation related to this business novices are dedicated to serve is to redefining the prevalent practice of production. This factor is driven by the creative adage of creative destruction. Furthermore, it appears to be impossible to transform the existing method and tools of production, they seem adamant in changing the existing practices and strategies of the organization. The novice executives usually cater the tangible purpose to transform business and prevalent financial practices in order to stabilize the annual growth of the business and sales characteristics.
On that note, the business executives of Pfizer always look for higher excellence and their embedded merit guides them towards the potential origin of change in the infrastructural level. They always prefer to respond on those significant sources of change and simultaneously enhances the risk propensity of the network of enterprises they are working on. Furthermore, they possess prudent forecasting skills in order to answer the leaping public expectations and to devise a prudent immunity master plan that have the potential to combat with the drastic environmental and other artificial adversities (Zhanget al. 2014).
Innovation
The fact that Pfizer is one of the largest pharmaceutical company in the world makes them invest a lot of time and money into innovating new medicines that would help patients in some new way. If all the underlying aspects associated with new business ventures can be categorized, the first and foremost criterion of being a promising venture, the administration must possess the capabilities to identify change within the infrastructure. Furthermore, the business executives associated with the fresh business venture should possess the honesty and transparency to pursue new opportunities. On that note, it can be addressed that they encourage a considerable amount of individual learning in order to accomplish the absolute objectives of higher merit (Woodet al. 2013).
This subsequently enhances the ability to accept several new risks and the acquired experience and realization needs to be further implemented in order to consolidate and expand their regime of concern. Pfizer is always interested in new ventures that might take their business towards new directions and this whole process is guided by the motivation to excel in business area where they function in. Innovation is another significant aspect that needs to be addressed while discussing about new business ventures since it encourages the transformation of the prevalent and archaic practice of productions. Moreover, if the mode of productions appears staunchly indispensable to the process, they suggest the alteration of the services and the interface of exchanges that is equally affordable and time-effective (Sasai, 2013). Apart from that, it indulges executives and other workers to effectively enhance the prevalent values of the resources in order to prepare and exploit it for higher excellence. This ideal alteration of productive values of a certain tangible resource might influence the absolute productivity of the entire venture. In entrepreneurship innovation requires personal excellence.
Alterations are required for any business. New business ventures need new innovative ideas and new strategic improvements in the managerial sector. Business plan of the organization requires freedom from archaic structure. Embedded structure within the organization fundamental changing processes. To sustain the business business practices also need to go through several changes. Innovation is highly relevant in establishing a business. Furthermore, the business associates with fresh and prudent business ideas can add innovation and new dimensions on the prevalent products that are already available and accessible for the customers. Innovative capabilities compensate its perpetual blaming of time-consuming through ensuring the future success of the implemented strategies. This aspect of innovation encourages the respective enterprise to concentrate on long-term goals while ceasing to put additional emphasis on the short-term key potential indicators.
Fig: Hierarchy of Entrepreneurship
Source: Self-generated
Recognizing change
Apart from the collaborative capabilities, the notion of innovation serves the respective enterprises simply by encouraging the management to evade the path dependence that are usually employed to accomplish a particular destination. The sheer complacence of serving the immediate customers may consolidate the possibilities of current success. However, it also poses a threat of collapse on the ultimate objectives of Pfizer. On that note, it is essential to address that in order to gain a relative advantageous status, Pfizer has shifted its mechanism where instead of looking at the elevation of customer values it has significantly reduced its initial expenditure. Moreover, the creative agencies of Pfizer have expressed the desire to invest the surplus capital in their advertising campaigns in order to consolidate their prevalent brand image.
Furthermore, if it appears impossible to transform the prevalent method and tools of production, they seem adamant to alter the clumsy processes of delivery and service(Mu, 2017). In order to acquire positive brand vibe, the enterprise seems adamant to elevate the prevalent values of tangible resources that might ensure an enhanced functionality. Consequently, it has the potential to improve the productivity within the given strength and workplace of Pfizer. This might enhance the dimension of viability embedded in the product and simultaneously increases the demand with a consolidating brand reputation.The previous apprehension is not universal since a few of the business ideas pertain certain specific issues that need to be addressed through an investigative framework within the domain of expertise. The immediate outcomes of the conducted investigation varies on the ground of the nature of business and the associated industry the respective business lies in.
It is imperative and lies in the assessment aptitudes that the organizations need to develop is the ability to distinguish among the integral components of strategis that the respective organizations wishes to implement. Moreover, it is also essential to identify the governing factors that characterize every transaction in order to have it done seamlessly (Marples and Gravelle, 2014). Pfizer has exhibited a sheer vehemence about the strategic capabilities since it has been able to impart a considerable attention in the aspect of anticipating evolving customer values while maintain the uniformity of their initial expenditure. This strategic blends of ventral objectives insures an advantage for Pfizer across the global market.
The quotient of Risk-propensity can be served as a potential index that may herald the enterprise to identify infrastructural changes. Apart from that, at the entrepreneurial capabilities ensures the higher values of requisite resources and in return expects new business executives and subordinates with relevant skills and merit in order to deal with the updated resources. Furthermore, it encourages the novices to increase their individual level of learning in order to respond to the increasing demand of skills and expertise. It is exaggeration to admit that this discerning of infrastructural changes comes with an entire oeuvre of opportunities with the embedded possibilities that ensures the Pfizer to thrive towards its absolute business and sales objectives. Moreover, the associated events while pursuing these potential sources of possibilities might act as the index of risk propensity that advocates the strategic unit of the respective network of enterprises. Furthermore, this encourages the entire enterprise to work on the capabilities of accepting and resolving risks.
On that note, it can be concluded that, the fresh business ideas that entrepreneurs bear comes with embedded possibilities that can herald the enterprise or the network of enterprise towards sustainability. Moreover, as these business executives act as a vector of fresh and prudent ideas, they bear the potential to integrate a viable element into the prevalent products that eventually explore the possibilities of the products to interpret multidimensionality. It also added an extra element of interest of the potential customers that in return consolidates the prevalent brand image of the products. Moreover, the substantial dimension of innovations that are embedded in these fresh ideas enhances the possibilities of the products to be of multiple functionality. The capabilities of these novice business executives cater the quotient of risk-propensity of the respective network of enterprises and encourage the prevalent vectors to concentrate on individual learning.
This is because it subsequently enhances the embedded capability of the vectors and enables the network of enterprises to attend for projects and ideas of higher excellence. Furthermore, these fresh ideas percolate the prevalent values of the requisite tangible resources and alter the corresponding hierarchy to transform the lower value to the higher one. These subtle infrastructural changes encourage the network to incorporate several other opportunities within the prevalent structure of ideas and the characteristic blend of preexisting ideas and the fresh and prudent innovation ensures the network of enterprise to thrive for the desired absolute objectives.
Weakness:
Since the management of Pfizer has not collaborated with some multinational units beforehand, it is very flagrant from their demeanor towards Innovation that they hesitate to delegate tasks in accordance with the suitability of the subordinates. This eventually enforces the management to take decisions that are devoid of merit while imparting a biased perspective.
Recommendations:
Pfizer needs to associate themselves with several other creative pursuits in order to exercise their respective collaborative capabilities. Furthermore, this creative involvement might endow the faculties with a transparent comprehension about the tasks they are assigned for. Apart from that, this creative camaraderie will enhance the agencies to take prudent and unbiased decisions that might prevent some of the fatal consequences.
Conclusion
Based on the discussions that have been done in the paper, it is evident that clear analysis of a firm can be done from the perspectives of different themes and aspects of running the operations of a firm. Marketing strategies have been diagnosed and identified as one of the key methods of making sure that the firm’s functionalities within the industry is ensured. Brand imaging and logo, as well as branding strategies that help firms achieve maximum market share. Branding is one of the key drivers of the operations of any industry and firm and this is often the basis of action plans of firm operations. Like any other asset of a firm, brand also needs to be managed properly and specified action plans are to be chalked out.
The aspects of the business need to be assessed and evaluated in a clear way and this would be one of the deciding factors of whether a business would be successful or not. Logo is the first thing that is decides whether an individual would be interested in the company or not. Product design is the determining factor that would ensure the highest level of exposure after a first glance.
The initial objective of business entrepreneurs is to discern and exploit changes that are present in the infrastructural level. This is an imperative aptitude that every business executive must possess to herald the respective network of enterprises towards competitive advantage. This recognition of abrupt changes is followed by the encouragement of individual learning of each of the associates since it prepare themselves to address the projects of higher excellence (Pike, 2017). Pfizer is always game for new ventures and exploring areas that would be challenging and would enable the company to use new techniques and innovative methods to create new products that would also help the people who are in need of those products and medicines.
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