What an fun experience working in a group has been this week. I can honestly say that working through the pharmasim project with Mindy and Christine has been a pleasant experience. I must say, it is nice to work with others that have practiced with the pharmasim scenario during the past 6 weeks. Having practiced we are able to draw upon our past experiences which has helped us come up with strategies to complete periods 1-3.
Step 1- With our nerves fluttering about we logged into pharmasim. Having become familiar with the scenario during our own time we jumped right into discussion. What was our plan? As we discussed the case the plan appeared. We didn't want to make too many decisions early on so we kept it simple. We focused on creating awareness and listening to the consumer and their buying habits. We did this by creating a website and changing our message to include: minimized side effects. We also made some changes to our Advertising budget as well as reallocated our Promotion and Sales force as it related to the Market reports we studied. After our decision were made and we had a three person unanimous vote Christine hit the advance button..........SUSPENSE
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Step 2- Seeing a slight gain in the stock price made us all scream. What an amazing feeling of teamwork. We had made a plan and planned/allocated accordingly and it seemed to pay off. This was a confidence booster. Maybe all of our preparation and studying was paying off. Did I speak too soon? In reality our first period success made the second period scary. This period we decided to move around our sales force again. We decided to take out the alcohol in Allround and decided to sell the unused batch to jobber at a loss. We made this decision mainly because it was more important to us to be a positive business and try to be transparent. We had made a net profit from the past period so it made sense to take a loss if it meant we remained an ethical business. Taking out the alcohol meant that we could now change our message that Allround doesn't cause drowsiness which was one of the concerns with non users. In this period we began to buy reports. We wanted to see where others were allocating there sales force and we wanted to check on our price as it compared to others in the market. We left our price alone and decided to move around our sales force to compete with others. Once again we all held our breath as Christine hit the advance button.
Step 3- AHHHHHHH!!! I couldn't look. Did we loose? Glancing at our stock price we screamed again!! This was an interesting period since we got to select a potential line extension that did not represent cannibalism. Allround being a multi purpose over the counter (OTC) medicine meant that most anything we introduced would take a bite out of Allround sales. We decided to do a conjoint analysis to help us figure out which one made the most sense. Children's cold was our choice. We also bought a promotional report to compare our promotion with our competitors.
Who knows what the future will bring. We are having fun and applying material from the course in a way that allows us to discuss, learn and laugh.
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When you're on top don't talk about anyone else.
This was a topic discussed in Thursday's nights lecture that my pharmasim actually discussed. When deciding how to advertise we didn't want to spend too much time comparing with others. We knew we had the highest market share and we thought that talking about the competition would give them recognition.
Band's like Coca- Cola, Apple and Southwest are great examples of this thought process.
Tom Woolfe writes in his article: "Know Your Competition, But Don't Trash Them". http://www.woolfmedia.com/wordpress/2011/07/know-your-competition-but-dont-trash-them/
"The rule is to learn from your competition, but never mention them. As Machiavelli once wrote, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer,” so you need to keep a close eye on where the competition are appearing, what they are saying, and who is following them. That task has become much easier in the era of the web and social media, so follow their followers and keep your eyes and ears open. But whatever you do don’t mention them by name in your own press or marketing material – why give them the free publicity? And why undermine your own authority and assumed leadership by pointing to the other guy and saying, in essence, “But we’re better than they are…”."
The above mentioned brands are particular when it comes to advertising. They are the leaders in their markets and take that into consideration when choosing their message. Just like Tom Woolfe suggests in his article these brands do not mention their competition.
Mentioning the competition not only gives them free publicity it allows your customers to learn about other products. Yes, out mothers taught us to share however, sharing in the business world isn't appreciated.
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