Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Marketing Complex Business Environment

Question: Discuss about the Marketing for Complex Business Environment. Answer: Introduction: In the present complex business environment, ethics has emerged as one of the prime factors that can actually made serious impact on the business perspectives of the organizations. Business ethics is regarded as one of the most complex subjects that organizations have to face in order to sustain its position in the market. Maintenance of ethics in the marketing field focuses on the philosophy that includes all efforts made by the organizations. Ethics in marketing field seeks to highlight fairness, honesty and responsibility in all the implemented marketing strategies of the organizations. In this essay, the focus will be on two Australian pharmaceutical organizations namely Alphapharm and Prima Biomed. The essay will try to highlight all the major issues that these organizations are facing at the time of marketing their products in the global market. Main body: As per the article by Drumwright and Murphy (2014), ethics involved within the pharmaceutical marketing field is developed from the organizational ethics that is a matter of culture, accountability and system compliance. However, majority of the pharmaceutical organizations invest huge amount in the research and development process so that it can able to become first choice for the people. The focus two organizations have also tried to develop drugs to gain major share of the Australian market. Alphapharm is among the top pharmaceutical organizations in Australia. Therefore, the company always invests heavily on the effective utilization of the marketing strategy (Cui 2015). Furthermore, Alphapharm focuses on the development of new drugs as well. For that reason, Alphapharm always looks to utilize aggressive marketing strategy so that the new products can able to gain popularity in the market. However, huge investment creates lot of pressure for the marketers of Alphapharm to create instant popularity in the market. Many medicines of the organization are being advertised in television and other electronic medium. However, it creates ethical issues for the organization to manage (Fugh-Berman 2013). As medicine contains specific drugs, the people without any doctors prescription cannot consume it. However, aggressive marketing strategy of the organization has able to influence many people from all across the Australian market to purchase specific medicines to get instant relief from the minor diseases like headache, back pain etc. However, many health care professionals have highlighted the fact that utilization of aggressive marketing strategy in the pharmaceutical industry can create major health issues for the people. As aggressive marketing strategy able to improve the basic knowledge of the people regarding the use of a particular medicine, people tries to avoid visiting specialized professionals at the early stage of any disease. On the other hand, Alphapha rm invest huge amount on the effective utilization of research and promotional process. Therefore, it has become inevitable for the organization to utilize aggressive marketing strategy so that it can able to recover the invested amount effectively from the market (Dale 2016). Thus, it actually represents an ethical dilemma for Alphapharm to handle. On the other hand, marketing strategy of Prima Biomed is primarily focuses on the utilization of pharmaceutical sales representatives to gain major share of the market. As mentioned by Ahmed and Saeed (2014) pharmaceutical sales representatives play a critical part in creating popularity of a particular drug or medicine. Many studies have also mentioned that educating health professionals regarding the development of new drugs or medicine is probably the best possible way for the pharmaceutical organizations to enhance the popularity of the product. Prima Biomed has always tried to utilize pharmaceutical sales representatives effectively. The company always tried to provide all the detail information regarding every product so that health care professionals can able to refer to a particular product effectively (Ali and Al-Aali 2015). Thus, it can be assessed that marketing strategy of Prima Biomed heavily depends on the level of trust between the health care professionals and pharmac eutical sales representatives of the organization. In the present competitive business environment, every organization is looking to utilize the strategies that can able to provide greater market share. As a result, it induces organizations to consider unethical ways of improving the sales. For instance, increase competition level can actually influence pharmaceutical sales representatives of Prima Biomed to convey messages like they provide best medicines, which definitely can selection pattern of medicines for the health care professionals. Furthermore, it has been assessed that pharmaceutical sales representatives are also providing different types of bribe like gifts or monetary benefits so that they prescribe companys product for the patients (Adobor 2012). Furthermore, it has been identified that pharmaceutical sales representatives of Prima Biomed also providing free samples to influence doctors to prescribe specific drugs. Thus, it highlighted major ethical issue regarding t he marketing strategy of Prima Biomed. However, both the organizations are in the pharmaceutical business for a long time. Therefore, it can be said that both the organizations always able to maintain the quality of the medicine in an appropriate way. However, the marketing strategy of the both the organizations are creating major ethical issues. For instance, Alphapharm strategy of utilizing aggressive marketing strategy is influencing people to purchase medicine without consulting any health professionals (Mackey and Liang 2013). As a result, it can actually create serious health issues for the people. For that reason, it has become ethical responsibility for the organization to highlight the significance of consulting with any health care professionals before consuming any medicine. However, marketing strategy of Alphapharm does not focus on this perspective. Furthermore, Alphapharm also has to focus on ensuring that marketing strategy of the organization has able to maintain international standards in an effective way . Alphapharm also have to focuses on the scientific and accurate communication strategy with the people. Therefore, people can able to understand the kind of side affect it can have on the health of the patients (Civaner 2012). On the other hand, Prima Biomed ethical issue regarding marketing strategy has to focuses on the utilization of fully disclosed communication structure. Transparency in the communication between pharmaceutical sales professionals and doctors can actually reduce the possibility of misuse of any particular medicine. Furthermore, Prima Biomed also has to focus on the effective utilization of free sample so that it can able to help needy patients in an appropriate way. It has been identified that pharmaceutical sales representatives are looking to provide free samples to the health care professionals so that they recommended it to other patients (Thompson, Komparic and Smith 2014). As a result, majority of the free sample goes to insured patients. However, if Pri ma Biomed utilize these free sample for the poor patients, it can definitely able to enhance its present level of ethics. Thus, it actually can help to improve the image of the organization. In order to manage the ethical issue properly, both the organizations can select social media sites, as it allows organizations to create direct communication level with the potential customers. Thus, it will also help Alphapharm and Prima Biomed to increase the knowledge level of people. Moreover, it also help organizations to increase the transparency in the marketing strategy, which will definitely create positive impact on the ethical maintenance perspectives. Conclusion: The above discussion highlighted the fact that both the organizations are facing few ethical challenges regarding their marketing strategy. The present competitive business environment is making it even more difficult for both the organizations to make any change in their implemented marketing strategy. However, it is necessary for both the organizations to focus on the ethical sides of their marketing strategy so that they can able to maintain its position in the market. References: Adobor, H., 2012. Ethical issues in outsourcing: the case of contract medical research and the global pharmaceutical industry.Journal of business ethics,105(2), pp.239-255. Ahmed, R.R. and Saeed, A., 2014. Pharmaceutical drug promotion practices in Pakistan: Issues in ethical and non-ethical pharmaceutical practices.Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research,20(11), pp.1630-1640. Ali, A.J. and Al-Aali, A., 2015. Marketing and ethics: What Islamic ethics have contributed and the challenges ahead.Journal of Business Ethics,129(4), pp.833-845. Civaner, M., 2012. Sale strategies of pharmaceutical companies in a pharmerging country: The problems will not improve if the gaps remain.Health Policy,106(3), pp.225-232. Cui, G., 2015. Ethical issues in ethnic segmentation and target marketing. InProceedings of the 1998 Multicultural Marketing Conference(pp. 87-91). Springer International Publishing. Dale, O., 2016. Ethical issues and stakeholders matter.Addiction,111(4), pp.587-589. Drumwright, M.E. and Murphy, P.E., 2014. Ethical Issues of Social Marketing and Persuasion.The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing [3 volumes],175. Fugh-Berman, A., 2013. How basic scientists help the pharmaceutical industry market drugs.PLoS Biol,11(11), p.e1001716. Mackey, T.K. and Liang, B.A., 2013. Pharmaceutical digital marketing and governance: illicit actors and challenges to global patient safety and public health.Globalization and health,9(1), p.1. Thompson, A., Komparic, A. and Smith, M.J., 2014. Ethical considerations in post-market-approval monitoring and regulation of vaccines.Vaccine,32(52), pp.7171-7174.

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