Question

Promotion and pricing of a product or service involves consideration of the strategies as well as how the strategies will be carried out, in line with the organization’s values. You read about promotion and pricing (two of the 4 P’s of the marketing mix) and had an opportunity to review the 4 P’s tutorial. You read about ethics and social responsibility in Chapter 3 and had an opportunity to discuss these topics in the Discussion. In this Assessment you will apply these concepts to a real-world company scenario. In addition you will add audio to your presentation which speaks to the audience specified in the scenario. Being able to prepare a professional audio visual presentation is an important career skill and can be added to your resume once you have become proficient.

Read the scenario below and address all the checklist items.

Scenario:

A start-up company, Senuvis is a United States (U.S.) pharmaceutical products firm that is growing very rapidly at home and abroad. Integrity and honesty regarding product quality and concern for consumer well-being are values of the founders of the firm.

Recently Senuvis developed several new products to service customers who cannot afford the pricier life-saving anti-allergen medications and the self-injecting devices currently on the market. These products can be self-injected by the person suffering from a life-threatening allergic reaction and were just recently approved for the marketplace by the U. S. Food and Drug Administration.

In order to respond to the projected rapid growth of the firm, they are going to be hiring an additional 200 employees in the next two months to cope with the demand for these new life-saving products. Because the company is hiring so many new employees, they are concerned with maintaining the founders’ original values of social responsibility while ensuring a quality product.

They are also concerned with promoting and pricing these new products fairly, based on the company values along with their concern for affordability for the middle-class in the U.S. and other consumers and client companies abroad.

As a marketing consultant to the president of the company and executive management, address the items pertaining to the promotion and pricing strategy for the company’s new products in line with the company founders’ values and their social responsibility.

Checklist:

Provide a public relations strategy to promote the new product line while considering the social responsibility involved.

Prepare 1 tool each for consumer sales promotion, personal selling, and social media.

Answer 1

Public Relations Strategy:

To develop and execute a successful PR strategy, Senuvis must have work within the following framework:

• Determine goals: While being aligned to the founders’ values of product quality and consumer wellbeing, the goals of the public relations strategy can be specified to achieve product awareness in the market and at the same time fulfil social responsibility. Some of the major challenges in the healthcare system are affordability, cure and access. Senuvis can set a goal for their campaign to address these issues.
• Target Audience: The consumers for the self-injectable anti-allergen medicines are the middle class and lower income groups. However, for the PR campaign, these groups can be indirectly targeted through partnerships with governments, NGOs and aid groups, global organisations including the UN.
• Core message: The message must be easy to understand, credible and set the desired narrative. A sample message can be: “Do-It-Yourself medication is now affordable and near you.”
• PR Tactics: Senuvis public relations strategy can be achieved through well planned campaigns. Sponsoring free vaccination campaigns in collaboration with global organisations, events during specific days of observance like World Diabetes Day, employees volunteering for blood donation camps in small local communities.
• Set deadline: The PR campaign can be planned for a period of six months. Campaigns can be repeated and/or modified for different communities.
• Metrics: The key performance indicators must be defined for the PR strategy. Product awareness, brand preference, enquiries, sales are all possible KPIs. Reach and coverage of the campaign to the communities that previously had to make do with inaccessible and unaffordable medications.

Tools

• Sales promotion: Since the target audience is the lower income groups, sale promotion can include discount strategies for regular customers. Offers can be made for monthly bulk purchases.
• Personal selling: This involves face-to-face personal Interaction either with the prospective end user or a reseller (pharmacy, hospital, etc.). The Senuvis salesperson will have to challenge the staus quo and highlight the do-it-yourself value that the new product brings to its users. A simple demo or a video clip on a smartphone or tablet can be shown to the prospects.
• Social media: Using an integrated approach to social media, PR campaign can be executed in the run up to the specific sponsored event or special days of observance. Hashtags and trends can be created like #DIYonDiabetesDay on Twitter with video links on Youtube and other platforms.