We keep the brand alive through various activities. New activities like event management, direct to customer advertising/promoting etc. The four 'A' no doubts are important for us to market our products but equally important are 4 R's which has really made today's marketing as Octagonal from Rectangular marketing ('4Ps'). The first 'R' which is added is, Why should customer buy and what is its relevance to customers.
Relevance to Consumer: This is becoming very important. Concept of unique selling point is replaced by unique customer perception (UCP). As said earlier, one cannot sell grass to a lion.Unique selling point can be a tool to marketing professional but cannot be ultimate to make the consumer buy it. Therefore, we give relevance to consumer.
You cannot expect customer to change their style if it does not suit the customer. No wonder, many FMCG companies are finding ways to make the product more relevant to consumer. HLL, Colgate, Godrej all have gone out to modify the product character to suit the local needs. Success of Cipro-Tini or Ofloxa-Tinidazole in the field of antidiarrhoeal market is typical of relevance to customer and end consumer.
Product gave good success in prompt control and minimizing recurrence. Lupin's new anti-TB product in line with current medical thinking is yet the live example where many pharma companies bends the existing thinking process to bring up the new reality. Relevance should also bring returns to end-user. Unless he gets better ROI he will not become loyal customer. Returns to Consumers: This is very important too. Indian consumer is more intelligent compared to others.
This is what world famous J. Sheth talked about Indian consumer psychic.They always calculate "Value for Money". They do evaluate even after the purchase is over and try to reinforce and justify the decision. Today, doctors too like to evaluate new products before going for it. Hence, concept of clinical trial for new product can help the launch of new product more successful.
No doubt 18% of customer will continue to buy on impulse if it is new. But decision making process get delayed if investment is high. Return on Investment (ROI) if communicated properly can easily convince "Rational Consumer".Doctors may times are rational consumer and therefore this is going to be very critical for pharma marketing. Ranbaxy communicates this effectively by proper promotion. Sampling ; visual aid detailing is not enough.
We consider response generation important in view of resource crunch. Relationship through product ; service: Relationship marketing was unknown, was practiced more in consumer durable, engineering sector. The emergence of CRM has taken marketing to a greater height. Customer as a spokesman is becoming the key objective.
Relationship marketing is a blend of product, quality and services. To achieve effective relationship marketing, all the three factors will play role. We also take care of the matter of fact that we cannot develop relationship marketing if we do not develop top quality products, which are affordable and effective and also provide service to retailers, customer and end users. We are doing lot of work in developing CRM with customers. However, under the garb of Relationship marketing we see to it that we should not bribe the customers.
This is not CRM.Direct Marketing: It includes two divisions viz. Sales and Marketing, The sales department look into the sales generated by the sales personnel whereas the marketing department looks after functions such as Branding of the product, Handling complaints of the customers, look after proper training of sales personnel and new employees. The sales personnel take the products in order to reveal it to the doctors so that they can further direct the information to the medical stores so that they stock in their stores the Ranbaxy products and then finally the doctor prescribe it to the patients.This is how the chain functions with respect to Ranbaxy products. The bottomline is Ranbaxy adopts direct selling approach.
The above hierarchy suggests that there is a state wise one manager under whom work four Sales Managers zone wise i. e. the four zones viz. North, East, West ; South, within each zone there are three to four managers called Zonal Managers who work under him.Then there are regional managers around two to three who work under each Zonal Manager, District Managers around three to four work under each Regional Manager, Medical Representatives around five to seven work under each District Manager and finally these MRs make the sale to the doctor who is the penultimate customer. The above hierarchy suggests that there is one single Marketing Manager who looks after three divisions viz.
Group Product Department in which the group product manager looks after Product Manager, Brand Manager and Therapy Manager.The second division is of Medical Department in which there is a Medical manager who looks after Doctors and Doctors further look after Masters in Pharmacists. The last and the third division is Training Department in which the managers look after training of newly appointed employees. Lets study each department's functions in detail: Group Product Department: The Brand Manager or Product Manager in it is supposed to look after the activities such as Development of Brand, keep a track of competitive information, Visual aids, Reprints of Products i. e.how much prints to be circulated amongst doctors.
The Marketing Manager looks after; formulation of Marketing strategies, free samples of products i. e. how many samples to be given free, gifts, distributing study/literature materials, launching of products and meetings to be held with the members of the organization. Medical Department: The job of medical manager is to look after the science of products, provide knowledge to MRs during training, tell them about the pros and cons of the product, the features of the products, regular clinical studies and respond to Doctor's queries.
The Training Department: The job of Training Manager is to see to it that the MRs, District, Regional and Newly appointed Managers receive proper training so as to function effectively and efficiently. There is a website called "www. Ranbaxyfordoctors. com" especially designed for doctors by Ranbaxy so as to help doctors enhance their knowledge. Ranbaxyfordoctors.
com: When Ranbaxyfordoctors. com was launched, our endeavour was to build a site that would act as a one-stop Internet destination for a doctor: whether he is looking for news, views, entertainment, tips, community building or means of improving his practise.In this way, doctors could get an 'anchor' site on the web, a site that they could regularly visit and rely on for the sharing and enhancement of knowledge. Our philosophy states that Ranbaxyfordoctors.
com is an Internet resource that aims to create a virtual platform where doctors of all specialities, age, sex and creed; irrespective of geographies, come together and interact to share and enhance knowledge. Creation of a 'resource' and enhancement of features implies that change is imperative.Keeping with this spirit we recreated our site, with better features and a more colourful and exciting interface. Business Opportunities with Ranbaxy: Core Competencies: Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals Inc. is a product-driven pharmaceutical company with diversified expertise. While RPI is relatively new to the US market, it is by no means a new player.
As a wholly owned subsidiary of Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited, RPI offers an advantage of being a global presence with experience in more than 40 international markets and over 41 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry.Our product development and manufacturing capability, teamed with our ability to market products in many global markets, makes RPI an attractive business ally. A key part of our business strategy is to collaborate with partners with complementary skills - "A Win-Win" strategy that strengthens the position of our partners as well as RPI. RPI has already experienced commercial success penetrating the US health care market, and looks forward to enhanced growth and future business opportunities through collaboration and strategic alliances.
