Effective market strategy greatly determines the successful performance of a business. However, its sufficiency to meet the requirements of a business is highly doubtable. With a biased focus on the pharmaceutical industry, it is, therefore, cardinal to ascertain the authenticity of the above statement. A marketing strategy in the pharmaceutical industry will play a role that will be limited to the marketing functions of the organization. For instance, a marketing strategy will improve brand definition and brand value in the marketplace. In this regard, an effective market strategy enables an organization to identify its customers and define consumer characteristics (Baker, 2008). The brand definition also determines how an organization conducts other marketing functions such as product distribution and promotion. A pharmaceutical company can only develop its promotional and distributional strategies after identifying the targeted consumers in the market. For example, a pharmaceutical company may segment the market according to consumption patterns and volumes. Such a segmentation approach may result in companies and individual household segments. The behaviors of the two segments determine the type of drugs or medical products that the company offers to the consumers. The performance of the products purchased by these consumers affects the brand value and the level of sales revenues (Shaw, 2012).
The market strategy also determines the success of a pharmaceutical company by improving its competitive edge. It is through the market strategy that a pharmaceutical company develops products that meet the needs and wants of consumers. The strategy also enables an organization to adopt effective pricing approaches, which can be used to increase the level of sales. Competition ensures that an organization provides the right product to the right consumer in the right place. For instance, in the pharmaceutical industry, companies offer their products to consumers using the right channels to increase the level of sales. Consumers of pharmaceutical products can access various products from different avenues such as chemist shops, hospitals, chain stores, and online stores (Baker, 2008).
The market strategy also determines the successful performance of a pharmaceutical firm by providing a comprehensive marketing plan. The plan takes into account the environmental factors such as laws, economic conditions, and technological elements, which may affect the performance of a product. The plan also enables an organization to predict supply and demand patterns based on the mentioned factors and consumer behavior (Baker, 2008). Even though effective market strategy greatly determines the successful performance of a firm, it does not play a sufficient role in addressing the issues that affect the business. For instance, in a pharmaceutical company, the effective market strategy focuses on issues of product performance as compared to non-market strategy, which focuses on such important issues as resource utilization, effective management of the resource, cost control, and overall strategic plan. The effective market strategy may be costly to a pharmaceutical firm, since it may require the firm to spend extra resources on various initiatives. Marketing functions such as new product development, market research, survey studies, and product promotion may be very expensive for a firm. On the other hand, non-market strategies such as lean production technique and economies scale may sufficiently address the issues of an organization compared to effective market strategy. A pharmaceutical firm may adopt economies of scale to supply products at a very low cost. The reduced cost of production can be transferred to product pricing, hence providing quality products at a low cost. This position is a clear manifestation of why some firms regard non-market strategy as a necessity for successful performance (Shaw, 2012).
References
Baker, M. (2008). The Strategic marketing plan audit. Cambridge: Cambridge Strategy Publications.
Shaw, E. (2012). Marketing strategy: From the origin of the concept to the development of a conceptual framework. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, 4(1), 30- 55.