Well, I wish I could say that I am sad that this is my last blog post (but I'd be lying). This last post should be centered around a reflection of the semester. A summary of what I directly learned in the classroom from textbooks, articles, videos, etc. as well as what I indirectly learned by using the simulation.
Where to start. I am not ashamed to admit that I knew absolutely NOTHING about marketing coming into this course. I had no expectations because I really couldn't even define marketing. I am now happy to say that although I'm no expert, I certainly could describe some major marketing concepts to someone. And that feels good!
What I liked the most about this class was that I went into it so open minded and almost blind. As I just mentioned, I had no expectations which made absorbing the concepts so much easier. I had no reasons to object Drucker's opinions or challenge any theories... I just accepted them.
While the simulation was frustrating most of the times and it was often difficult to find common meeting times for group consensus, I must say that it was extremely beneficial. It allowed us to take the concepts we were learning in class and test our ability to actually apply them through decision making. This is definitely not a typical teaching style in any other courses (at least not ones that I have taken). And it was truly helpful. I feel comfortable saying that I would not feel comfortable in actually applying these concepts had I not had to practice them in the simulation. The group dynamic was also very beneficial because it brings ideas and challenges to your ideas that you may not be aware of had you been the sole person responsible for the decision. And ultimately, this is a true reflection of the marketing world reality. It won't always be just one person calling all of the shots. Instead, its a collaboration of multiple individuals exchanging ideas to try and come up with the best strategy to satisfy customer needs enough to retain them as customers and grow to gain more customers.
I was very pleased with my team's last period in PharmaSim. We didn't necessarily do bad in previous periods, but we definitely did not as well as we could have. As always, there were a ton of factors playing into it. But by the last period, we really ended up figuring out one of the best strategies and our dramatic growth reflects that. This can be attributed to the fact that we made it a point to complete the situation analysis and strategic plan both in the beginning few periods as well as towards the end of our implementation. The strategic plan revision was also helpful since alot can change in a few periods and it is important to analyze strategies that worked vs. those that did not work.. but most importantly WHY. Because without the WHY, you can't reformulate the strategy into a better one.
Overall, this class has enlightened me to a whole side of business that I was truly oblivious to. I guess I always thought that profit was the big driving force to corporation success. But through this class, its easy to see that without seeking, keeping, and pleasing customers, there is no profit.
Thanks for your time reading my posts!
Jennie
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Friday, September 6, 2013
It's The Final Countdown!
Finally! September had arrived. I don't mean to sound to enthusiastic about the end of the semester coming, but fall is my absolute favorite time of the year. There's too many activities to be doing rather than sitting inside doing marketing assignments! But next week shall be our last... along with a couple of last assignments.
This week's material consisted of a variance analysis video instruction as well as a marketing metrics article. While both materials were very helpful in conducting our revised marketing plan, I must say that I wish we were assigned the marketing metrics reading much earlier in the course. This article gave some really great advice that I wish I had learned BEFORE getting into a lot of PharmaSim decision-making. It discussed how companies can't use every metric under the sun to evaluate the performance of the marketing team... there are just too many factors, too many details, and some that may not even be relevant or controllable by the marketing team. They also mentioned the importance of re-evaluating metrics annually. This is something that I don't think I would have thought of on my own. But like anything else in this life, change is inevitable. So it makes sense that you would want to re-evaluate which metrics your company is using to measure marketing efficiency.
Since I discussed most of our revision points in my last blog post, I will save you and I from the grief of re-reading and re-writing it all. Basically, we are choosing to stay with the same general objectives and strategies just with more lax "limits" on budgets, personnel, etc. We found that such tight restraints hindered any growth and success that could have been gained by breaking these limits. The only major change that we are deciding to make in the next few periods is the reformulation of our original Allround product. We found that doctors and pharmacist recommendations did not increase no matter how many detailers we added. It states in the case that health care providers dislike the "shotgun" approach of including many different active ingredients in one OTC medication. Therefore, we will be looking into reformulation options to make our product more attractive (such as dropping the alcohol from our product).
One of the major points that our team was able to realize from the revision of our plan was that although our Allround product's market share has been on the slight decline, our Allright product was having extreme success in two short periods becoming the second most highly purchased allergy brand along with high pharmacist and doctor recommendations. This was an important distinction to make. In our first marketing plan, we identified one of our weaknesses to be our declining market share. However, as we learned throughout the semester, just because one product's market share is declining doesn't mean that the company as a whole is declining. We saw this with the introduction of our Allright product. By introducing the Allright product, Allstar was able to gain more market share (despite the falling market share of Allround). But yet this is what marketing research and the situation analysis is for... to find the strengths your company has, to visualize the opportunities available, to analyze the markets that are most attractive all in hopes to introduce something new to help your company continue to grow and be successful. Well I am glad to say, so far so good!
We will see where the next two periods take us with our new revised plan and hope for the best.
See you next week!
Jennie
This week's material consisted of a variance analysis video instruction as well as a marketing metrics article. While both materials were very helpful in conducting our revised marketing plan, I must say that I wish we were assigned the marketing metrics reading much earlier in the course. This article gave some really great advice that I wish I had learned BEFORE getting into a lot of PharmaSim decision-making. It discussed how companies can't use every metric under the sun to evaluate the performance of the marketing team... there are just too many factors, too many details, and some that may not even be relevant or controllable by the marketing team. They also mentioned the importance of re-evaluating metrics annually. This is something that I don't think I would have thought of on my own. But like anything else in this life, change is inevitable. So it makes sense that you would want to re-evaluate which metrics your company is using to measure marketing efficiency.
Since I discussed most of our revision points in my last blog post, I will save you and I from the grief of re-reading and re-writing it all. Basically, we are choosing to stay with the same general objectives and strategies just with more lax "limits" on budgets, personnel, etc. We found that such tight restraints hindered any growth and success that could have been gained by breaking these limits. The only major change that we are deciding to make in the next few periods is the reformulation of our original Allround product. We found that doctors and pharmacist recommendations did not increase no matter how many detailers we added. It states in the case that health care providers dislike the "shotgun" approach of including many different active ingredients in one OTC medication. Therefore, we will be looking into reformulation options to make our product more attractive (such as dropping the alcohol from our product).
One of the major points that our team was able to realize from the revision of our plan was that although our Allround product's market share has been on the slight decline, our Allright product was having extreme success in two short periods becoming the second most highly purchased allergy brand along with high pharmacist and doctor recommendations. This was an important distinction to make. In our first marketing plan, we identified one of our weaknesses to be our declining market share. However, as we learned throughout the semester, just because one product's market share is declining doesn't mean that the company as a whole is declining. We saw this with the introduction of our Allright product. By introducing the Allright product, Allstar was able to gain more market share (despite the falling market share of Allround). But yet this is what marketing research and the situation analysis is for... to find the strengths your company has, to visualize the opportunities available, to analyze the markets that are most attractive all in hopes to introduce something new to help your company continue to grow and be successful. Well I am glad to say, so far so good!
We will see where the next two periods take us with our new revised plan and hope for the best.
See you next week!
Jennie
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