Developing a Marketing Plan

This past week has been spent focusing on developing our Pharmasim marketing plans in our teams. I'm happy to say that this portion of the course went much more smoothly than the individual situational analysis. It is much nicer to have teammates to discuss things with and bounce ideas off. While often times I prefer working individually so as to not run into barriers with my thoughts or ideas, I much prefer the team format for the marketing plan as it was helpful to share ideas and rationalize them to others to ensure the best strategies were being taken. And speaking of strategies, let's get into that right now.

My main focus on the strategy going forward was to develop the Allstar Brands into an industry leader. It was clear that they dominated the cold market but the struggles were quite obvious in the cough and allergy markets. Thus, I was on board with developing new products to enter these markets from the get-go, which my team chose to follow through with. We will be introducing two new products. The first, Allround+, will be a cough remedy targeted to all households in the Pharmasim world. The second, Allright, will be an allergy remedy again targeted to all households. I thought that these were the two best markets to pursue in moving Allstar forward. The cough and allergy segments are not very large, especially compared to the cold market, but still presented an opportunity to be profitable. The competition within these segments was rather limited with only a few products available in each. It would be easy for us to introduce a brand that can compete right away.

There were additional market segments that were available to us that we collectively chose not to pursue. A product was recently introduced by a competitor specifically targeting children in the cold segment. Allstar had the opportunity to introduced a competing product. In my opinion, while this may have proved to be a profitable product itself, I believe it would have had a negative impact on the sales of Allround due to cannibalization. The risk of cutting into current sales with the two products we chose to introduce appear to be much less than with introducing a children's product. My thought was always that there was no need to interfere with the current product that is a Star in the market and for the brand.

Another reason that the choices were easy to make is because they were in demand by the consumers within Pharmasim. There was a call for remedies that were symptom specific and not multiple in nature. Consumers only wanted to take in a remedy what they were intending to treat and nothing extra. These two products will be exactly what consumers are looking for.

In introducing these products, our team chose to implement a price skimming strategy. We have seen that Allround is perceived as a high quality product and is perceived as a highly priced product as well. Consumers are willing to pay for a good quality product. My thoughts were that it is best to continue to uphold a standard of high quality throughout the Allstar brand and not just in one product specifically. Therefore, setting a higher price to reflect the high quality of the product made the most sense.

One final note to discuss is the need for flexibility moving forward. Obviously, this plan was created for a reason. It was thought out and anticipated to be the best strategy for Allstar as the periods progress. Therefore, it will be stuck to early and often. With that said, it is important to continue to analyze the environment and see if things change, if our decisions are working, or if something is taking a turn for the worse. If the situation presents an opportunity to do something that strays from the original plan, an appropriate decision needs to be made that best suits the brand in the future. Planning is very important to do and is best when it can be adhered to but it is by no means concrete and must be adjustable at any point in time.