Organizational Background – Abbott
Marketing Management is the organizational practice, which focuses on different techniques and methods to promote the particular brand or product. Every company has to ensure that their marketing strategy reaches to the target audience at the correct time and at the correct time. This report focuses on the company Abbott which is currently operating in more than 150 countries. Pharmaceutical industry is the biggest industry today. More than $500 million is spent on the industries research and development. This industry has also helped more than 20,000 people to find employment. Abbott is the technology driven company and believes that through technology they help the doctors in fast and smart diagnostic.
Abbott is an American company founded in 1888 and currently operating in more than 150 countries. The company was founded in Chicago by Wallace Calvin Abbott is known to make medical drugs. The company has eventually grown from making drugs to manufacturing medical devices, diagnostics and nutritional products. Abbott divided its researched based pharmaceuticals into Abbvie in 2013. In 2015, the total revenue of the company was more than $20.4 million. The medical test and diagnostics instruments of Abbott are used worldwide in hospitals, laboratories, blood banks and physician offices to diagnose and monitor diseases such as HIV, Hepatitis, Cancer, heart failure and metabolic disorders. In 2016, the firm was divided into separate division such as Diabetes Care, Diagnostic, Vascular Care, Nutrition and Vision. Johnson and Johnson group acquired vision, a department of eyecare.
The major competitors of Abbott are Pfizer, Johnson & Johnshon and GlaxoSmith Kline.
The marketing mix is defined as the process of placing the product at the correct price, place and time. The marketing mix is the combination of the elements that when put together, it creates the foundation of the business, missing out any element can result into the product failure. These marketing mix concepts are called the 4P’s of marketing. There are the 7P’s of marketing for the service industry (Anderson, G).
The 5C’s is one of the tools, which are a part of situational analysis; other tools are SWOT analysis and Porter Five Force analysis. The 5C’s concept analyzes the internal and external environment. This helps the organization to understand their customers and the capability to serve them better.
Customers: The demand of customer varies accordingly. A company needs to understand the customer wants and needs and work on it to fulfill their demand. The company should have the understanding of market size and growth, should have the understanding of the change in desire, needs and wants of the customer due to season or time, what are the things that tiggers the need of the customer, in what frequency does the product are being picked up by the customers and analysis between the cost and price of the product.
Abbott has the customers from all ages due to its different products such as nutrition products which are for the kids as well as for adults and Vascular care which is treats in heart problems which usually occurs in old peoples.
C – Abbott
Company: The evaluation of the company in terms of brand value or image should be regularly irrespective the company being the small size or large size. This shows what is the image of the company in the eye of the customer and in which areas the company has a scope of improving their product or image. Market changes within the fractions of second. It is important for the organization to understand and maintain their goodwill in the eye of the people.
Abbott started its operation in 1988 and is now operational in 150 countries. The products of the companies are used for several people worldwide.
Competitors: This analysis will show the competitors are are present in the market. The competitor analysis focus on three things- identifies the competitors, identify the product line that competitors offer and threats that competitors might create in the future. This analysis will help the company to focus in increasing their market share and serve their customer better.
A pharmaceutical industry is one profit making industry and over the time period several competitors are there. Some of competitors of Abbott are Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson
Collaborators: Collaborators are the one who show their interests in the growth of the company and are the company is willing to share their profits with their collaborators. Identifying the correct collaborators is the most important as they help the company to discover the untouched opportunities that company is aware of. Collaborators can be the suppliers, distributers and alliances to the customers.
The collaborators of Abbott can be managing team of the company, their suppliers i.e. the supply chain management companies.
Context or Climate: The context or climate analysis is often referred to PEST analysis. PEST stands for Political analysis, Economic analysis, Social analysis and technological analysis (Huang, and Wu 2013 pp 27-36).
Every pharmaceutical company generally has their own research and development centers. Abbott also has its in-house research and development center, which is named, as Abbott laboratories. The company develops their own medicines as well as the medical equipment.
The product segment in which the company specializes is Nutrition, Diagnostics, Vascular care, Diabetes Care and Vision. Vision one of the vertical of Abbott, which is dedicated eye and their health, is now a part of Johnson & Johnson.
There are several methods through which the company can estimate the requirement or needs of the customer. They are:
- Market Intelligence
- Market Research
Market Intelligence can be defined as the set of data, which is usually collected by the company about the specific segment of market in order to develop the product or make their entry into it. It gathers all the information on various segment i.e. data set, it analyzes the information and distributes the date to the relevant departments.
Pharmaceutical and Healthcare are of one of the industries known for their efficient Market Intelligence functions. More than 70% of the company has their fully functional operations of Market Intelligence. The market intelligence department closely works with top management of the top as this industry is majorly on inflection point therefore the whole emphasis is on strategic intelligence for the critical decision making (Ross, McGowan, and Styger, 2012).
Information Development
Competition level in pharmaceutical and healthcare is very high, due to which the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry have to find new and innovative ways to sustain and grow in the market.
Abbott is into healthcare industry with nutrition, diagnostics, vascular care (heart diseases), diabetes and vision as their main business areas. Along with the medicines it also manufactures the medicine instruments such as glucose monitoring apparatus, technologies to help in treating people with vascular or heart diseases and different diagnostic tools for hospitals, labs, blood centres, emergency department, doctor’s clinic and offices. The company is also makes nutrition for all age groups such as Pediasure, Pedialyte, Ensure and Glucerna; the company aims to help the people with all the necessary nutrients that is required to grow.
Market research is also one of the ways through which the companies assess the needs of the customers. Market research is more focuses on improving the quality and helps in decision-making. Market research can be done for the various fields such as to understand the potential market for the new entry, feedback or assessment of new launched product. Market research quantifies the findings of the research (Sharabati, Naji Jawad and Bontis, 2010; pp 105-131).
Collaborators are the people who have interest in the growth of the company. They can be stakeholders as well. In Abbott, the collaborators can be scientists who work to find new methods for the betterment of the company, they can be the members of the managements, they can be shareholders and etc. There can be several numbers of scientists such as the nutritionist or researches who research on the new techniques or methods to simplify the life of doctors as well as the patients. The Management in the organization is the decision making body, they can take the decision on finances of the company, approves the new product that’s need to be launched and what will be the return of the investments.
Market Segmentation is the process of segregating the market into a group of potential customers. These groups of consumers can be segmented on the basis of certain criteria such as:
- Gender
- Age Group
- Income
- Occupation
Market Segmentations are of several types:
- Psychographic Segmentation
- Behaviouralistic Segmentation
- Geographic Segmentation
Market segmentation can be done depending upon the industry the company falls into (Ellson, 2004. pp 21-34). Since, Abbott is into pharmaceutical and healthcare industry and deals in different business vertical such as:
- Nutrition
- Diabetes
- Vascular Care
- Diagnostics
- Vision
Vision is one of their eye care department, which was take over by Johnson and Johnsons.
Nutrition: This segment is develops the nutrition product for people of all ages as the companies believe that the nutrition is good for everyone’s health. The company also believes that people with chronic illness are in need of nutrition and want to keep the family health. The products of the brand are includes pediasure, Pedialyte, Ensure and Glucerna. The market segment for the vertical can be people of all age varying from infant to children and from teenagers to adult to old age people. This segmentation is done irrespective of the gender, age and geographic segmentation.
5C’s Analysis
Diagnostics: The key of any treatment for full recovery is to accurate and fast diagnostic. The company manufactures diagnostic tools which helps the doctors to provide with better treatments due to smarter, faster decision making diagnosis. Abbott believes that with their technology the life healthcare operations will be easy. The product of the brand is medical instruments, tests automation and information solutions for its customers. Since the customers for this segments would be hospitals, labs, blood centers, emergency centers and clinics. Therefore, segmentation type that would be used is occupation such as doctors, medical store owner or pathology doctors. This occupation segmentation can also segregated according to the age.
Vascular Care: Vascular care is related to heart problems. Abbott focuses on creating new and innovative technologies to improve the treatment of diseases related to vascular diseases. These diseases can be related arteries within and outside the hearts, heart arrhythmias i.e. irregular heartbeats and diseases related to heart values. The segmentation can be according to the age as older people generally develop vascular problems.
Diabetes: Diabetes is can be monitored using glucose monitor. Abbott believes that through technology they can help people with diabetes so that the people can live their life freely. Since, this disease is heredity and is carried till the old age therefore this is an open market anyone can be the potential customer (Hassan. and Craft, 2012 pp 344-356).
Abbott’s major clients can be hospitals, laboratories, Clinics and the medical stores.
Abbott wants to be there for the people who are suffering for disease and help them to live their lives in better way. The company also desires that the modern technology can help the treatment of diseased people faster and smooth (Moutinho, 2000. Pp 121-166).
Marketing mix is the foundation of marketing. It is the set of action that are being used by the company to promote their brand and its product. The Marketing mix is divided into 2 types:
- Marketing mix for product industry
- Marketing mix for service industry
The marketing mix of the product industry consists of 4P’s i.e. Product, Price, Place and Promotion (Singh, 2012. Pp 40-45)
The marketing mix of service industry consists of 7P’s i.e. Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Physical Environment and Process (Yadav, and Dabhade, 2013 pp 77-85).
Since, Abbott is the product industry the marketing mix would be 4P’s.
Product: The item, which is build to fulfill the needs or requirement of the particular segment of people. Every product is there in the market to full fill the need, desire of the audience (Moller & Parvinen, 2015). The product may or may not be for all the segment of people. The target audience for the product can be segment into many segments based on age, religion, region, gender and etc. All the details about the products are described in this segment of marketing mix.
In Abbott the products are the medicines and medical apparatus that the company manufactures. The product will vary from people to people.
Price: The price in the marketing mix can be described the value or the amount of a product that a customer enjoys to pay. This is one of the important segments of marketing mix as it determines the firm’s profit as well as the survival (Andaleeb, 2016).
Competition
The prices of all the products in Abbott are according to their product and the region that they are being sold in (Hutchinson & Donnell, 2015).
Place: Placement is important part of product market mix. The company or the organization has to place its product that is accessible to all its potential buyer or consumers.
Abbott being the pharmaceutical company has all its products being used around the worldwide. The Abbott makes one of the best medical instruments for the hospitals, clinics, labs etc.
Promotion: Promotion is the most important part of marketing. This component shows that how brand can creates its awareness and boosts the brand recognition and sales of the product. The promotion can be done through different marketing mode such as online marketing and offline marketing. Social media marketing comes under online marketing and print media comes under offline marketing.
Abbott uses several advertisement to advertise their products along with this the company also launches the several medical campaign for the launch of their products (Rahmani, Emamisaleh, and Yadegari, 2015 pp 98-108).
Conclusion
Abbott is the major market player in the healthcare and pharmaceutical company. The company have been functional in several countries and run its own research & development department in order to develop more and more number of drugs and medical equipment. The company believes to be a part of people’s life and take care of them so that they recover faster. The people from all the age group into different vertical and the products of the company can use the company.
References
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Ellson, T., 2004. Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning. In Culture and Positioning as Determinants of Strategy (pp. 21-34). Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Hutchinson, K., Donnell, L.V., Gilmore, A. and Reid, A., 2015. Loyalty card adoption in SME retailers: the impact upon marketing management. European Journal of Marketing, 49(3/4), pp.467-490.
Moutinho, L., 2000. Segmentation, targeting, positioning and strategic marketing. Strategic management in tourism, pp.121-166.
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Ross, P., McGowan, C.G. and Styger, L.E., 2012. A comparison of theory and practice in market intelligence gathering for Australian micro-businesses and SMEs.
Sharabati, A.A.A., Naji Jawad, S. and Bontis, N., 2010. Intellectual capital and business performance in the pharmaceutical sector of Jordan. Management decision, 48(1), pp.105-131.
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