Pfizer and its competitive marketing challenges

Pfizer has been the preeminent global pharmaceutical company in recent years and much of their success can be attributed to their marketing responsiveness and innovation. Pfizer is committed to patients, the community and quality product development. As a model in marketing effectiveness they also show how to lead internal resources efficiently to maximize market place opportunities.     

Problems and challenges in social marketing

This article reviews the problems that arise when general marketing principles are applied to social programs. Social marketing is conceptualized as the design, implementation, and control of programs seeking to increase the acceptability of a social ideal or practice in a target group. These problems can occur in 8 basic decision-making areas: market analysis, market segmentation, product strategy development, pricing strategy development, channel strategy development, communications strategy development, organizational design and planning, and evaluation. Social marketers find that they have less good secondary data about their consumers, more problems obtaining valid and reliable measures of relevant variables, more difficulty sorting out the relative influence of determinants of consumer behavior, and more problems getting consumer research funded than marketers in the commercial sector. They tend to have less flexibility in shaping their products and more difficulty formulating product concepts. Problems associated with establishing, utilizing, and controlling distribution channels comprise another major difference between social and more conventional forms of marketing. Social marketers also find that their communications options are somewhat limited as a result of problems associated with use of paid advertisements, pressures not to use certain types of appeals in their messages, and the need to communicate large amounts of information in their messages. Moreover, social marketers must function in organizations where marketing activities are poorly understood, underappreciated, and inappropriately located. Finally, they face problems trying to define effectiveness measures or estimating the contribution their program has made toward the achievement of certain objectives. If all these problems are anticipated and handled creatively, social marketing efforts can succeed.     

Subsidiary knowledge flows in multinational corporations: Research accomplishments,gaps, and opportunities

Research on knowledge flows in multinational corporations has grown considerably over the last 15 years or so. Part of the growth has resulted in the field becoming more “fluid” and thus prone to multiple definitions and measures of the same notions and constructs, as well as leading to contrary findings. We systematically and critically review the literature on knowledge flows in multinational corporations that has defined the subsidiary as the focal unit of analysis. We classify existing studies into four categories depending on the focus of examination: outcomes of knowledge flows, knowledge characteristics, actors involved in the knowledge flows, and relationships between these actors. On the basis of 92 articles published in 15 top management and international business journals from 1996 to 2009 inclusive we identify key accomplishments, existing gaps and future research directions.     

Agriculture in Europe: New challenges ahead

The recent reform of the EC’s Common Agricultural Policy is likely to be only the beginning of the adjustments which will be necessary in the near future. Accession applications by various EFTA countries are pending. At the same time Eastern Europe desperately needs assistance from Western Europe, not only in the form of food aid but also in the form of help in establishing agricultural production and trade based on the laws of the market. The following article takes stock of the situation.     

The application of "integrated marketing communications" to social marketing and health communication: organizational challenges and implications

Influencing consumer behavior is a difficult and often resource-intensive undertaking, with success usually requiring identifying, describing, and understanding target audiences; solid product and/or service positioning relative to competitors; and significant media and communication resources. Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is a new way of organizing and managing persuasive communication tools and functions which involves realigning communications to consider the flow of information from an organization from the viewpoint of end consumers. Although the application of IMC to social marketing remains relatively unexplored, the IMC literature and recent efforts by the US Centers for Disease Prevention and Control suggest that integrated communication approaches have much to offer social marketing and health communication efforts. IMC, IMC and social marketing, and implications of IMC for public and private sector social marketing programs are discussed.     

UK and German defence industry change: Some perspectives on strategic marketing

Over the past decade, the European defence industry has had to respond to increasing pressures of reduced defence spending, exacerbated more recently by removal of the immediate military threat from the former Soviet Union. Under the “Options for Change “, the UK has abandoned certain weapons programmes, while Germany has had the additional economic and social problems brought on by re‐unification. The industry's options comprise conversion, diversification or specialization, thus continuing to face structure change and competition from defence imports and “off‐the‐shelf” systems and equipment. Given the high exit barriers and past “cushioning” of the industry by governments, the presence of skills and know‐how to compete effectively is questionable. The case for strategic marketing approach for those suppliers remaining is clear; as buyer (monopsonistic) power strengthens, the threat of new entrants increases and the associated competitive rivalry intensifies. However, the ingrained “defence culture “ in many supplier organizations may be an impediment to change.     

Beyond matrices and black-box algorithms: setting marketing priorities with Marketing Strategy Conferences

With this paper, we introduce Marketing Strategy Conferences to set strategic marketing priorities effectively and allocate marketing-related resources accordingly. The system is based on managerial preference modelling with a decision model (analytical side) and communication-enhancing strategy conferencing (interactive side). After a review of alternative resource allocation frameworks, as rule-of-thumb approaches, matrix-based analyses, statistical analyses and management science models, we analyse existing analytical, behavioural and organisational impediments to effective marketing resource allocation. Addressing some of these impediments, this paper outlines two Marketing Strategy Conference cases, which we carried out for a pharmaceutical company, Schering Argentina.     

The impact of market similarity on international marketing strategies: The automobile industry in Western Europe

The formulation of an optimal marketing mix is quite complex when that mix must be effective across multiple international markets. At the crux of the problem is whether markets are similar to each other or interdependent and how this influences marketing mix decisions. Examining the marketing mixes of more than 30 automobile companies competing in the five major markets in Western Europe, it was found that easily changed marketing mix elements, such as prices and advertising, reflect market similarity, interdependence, and product‐market conditions, although not always in the expected ways. The least flexible element, the number of models offered, does not appear to reflect any of these types of conditions. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Research,myths and expectations: New challenges for management educators

During the late seventies and early eighties unprecedented numbers of women attempted to reach the top of the corporate hierarchies. This paper examines three factors which have handicapped management educators in preparing these women to meet this objective. It also discusses the impact of these factors on research in management education.Dr. Grondin is an Associate Professor of Marketing in the Faculty of Administration at U.N.B. Dr. Grondin's major teaching consulting and research interest at U.N.B. include consumer behaviour and marketing communications and she is the author of numerous government documents and publications on these topics.     

Mobile marketing: A literature review on its value for consumers and retailers

The article describes the existing knowledge of how mobile marketing can increase the value for consumers and retailers. Mobile device shopping, and consumers' use of mobile devices while shopping is shown to be both an extension of consumers' shopping behaviours developed on Internet-connected desktop and laptop computers (PC), and potentially new behaviours based on a mobile devices' uniquely integrated features such as camera, scanners and GPS. The article focuses on how mobile marketing creates value for consumers and retailers, enabling more precise research and development of managerial concepts and tools while providing both managers and academics with increased understanding of mobile marketing and its value outcomes for retailers.     

美欧日的中小企业员工培训比较及对中国启示

我国中小企业员工培训存在大量问题,既有理论上的原因,也有实践上的原因。美国、欧盟、日本中小企业的员工培训在培训理念、组织、经费、内容、师资和方案实施过程方面有各自的特点,对我国解决目前中小企业员工培训所面临的问题有很大的启示。只要我们能够结合国情,借鉴国外的实践经验,一定能够建立我们自己的有效的中小企业员工培训体系。     

凤凰展翅，迎来汽车行销新起点

互联网的诞生,因其快速传播、信息量庞大、交互性强等特点,逐步成为媒体时代的领跑者。凤凰网作为面向主流消费人群的综合资讯门户网站,融台凤凰卫视、凤凰周刊等跨媒体内容合作优势,在大媒体时代下脱颖而出,现已发展成为千万精英网民获取资讯的必选平台之。     

Internal marketing: Concepts,measurement and application

Internal marketing issues have been discussed widely for a number of years yet this remains an area in marketing with many fundamental questions unanswered. Previous research has not satisfactorily addressed a number of crucial issues in its development. The lack of attention to detail has hindered its progress and thus relegated it to the sidelines. As part of a wider study which investigates internal marketing from a transaction cost perspective, this paper sets the scene and explores the different views and applications of internal marketing. It addresses those fundamental questions that have not been thoroughly considered in the past. What are the principles that form the foundations for internal marketing? Does internal marketing belong in all organizations? Is internal marketing merely synonymous with good human resource management or should the organization pursue internal marketing in conjunction with external marketing activities? Then, with the transaction cost framework in mind, this paper considers how internal marketing can be measured and whether it is necessary, merely nice, irrelevant or indeed illegitimate.     

Learning and knowledge in early internationalization research: Past accomplishments and future directions

This article provides an evaluative overview of international entrepreneurship literature, in which the issues of learning and knowledge feature as central components underlying the causes, processes, and outcomes of early internationalization. We rely on Huber's (1991) categorization of five knowledge acquisition types - experiential learning, vicarious learning, searching, grafting, and congenital learning - to organize our review and to guide our examination of the literature. We discuss convergent findings in terms of conceptual and empirical issues and set forth areas for future research.