Johnson and Johnson being one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in United States, has experienced growth within its’ various sections. The firm hasn’t been so much affected by the expiry of patents on drugs since it took the necessary precautions and still experiences high sales. The new manager of J&J has the challenge of maintaining the high level of sales during his tenure (Johlke and Duhan 265-267). The company faces new rivalry from the market that has seen its sales slowing down.
Its’ new invention, drug-coated stent, has been held for a long time by the Food and Drug Administration and possibly will face fierce competition from Boston Scientific Corporation whose stent is preferred in the market. This is because J&J stent is highly priced and medical personnel say that its’ use is so much involving as compared to the rest. The rate at which the company acquires assets has also declined over the past few years (Barret 177-182).
List the Alternatives
The firm has to embark on increasing the rate of acquiring assets and building of small businesses. These business enterprises must be given full independence on strategy implementation and financial control. Instead of waiting for the approval of one drug, Waldo should drive the company towards scientific advancement that will enable innovation of other drugs.
Besides dealing with drugs, the company should look into how they can also produce other medical devices. Good communication network should be established between the firm and its constituent businesses. This should be for accountability purposes and enhancement of all the company’s operations (Kohli 53-8).
Analyze the alternatives in the case
The firm only managed to buy fifty two businesses over a period of ten years. This is not convincing since its below the expectations of a big company such as J&J. Improvement in the research and development will enable the company to expand its capacity to accommodate more employees and also improving on its ability to produce quality products.
Currently the company employs approximately nine thousand three hundred scientists within its labs (Barret 177-182). Forming partnership with other related companies will interfere with J&J independent nature that it has enjoyed for several years. The increased sales from the sale of brand will mean that the company commands a big percentage of the customer base (Cravens and Piercy 2009).
The firm needs to work on the projects that will enable it offer extra services and enable them reduce on the cost of production. This might as well be linked to the company’s’ researchers working on an invention that enables easy prediction and identification of those suffering from certain diseases like cancer.
The brand of the company should also be designed to depict the firm’s scientific nature; this will assist in luring consumers hence promoting the products sales (Grönroos 3-12). The use of this idea was practically experimented in the year 2002 and the results were positive since the sales increased by 4.9% from the year 2000 (Barret 177-182).
Recommendations
In order to improve on its research and development programs, J&J should form partnership with other related companies since it will help in cost sharing and also improvement of drug output and quality. The manager needs to recruit aggressive sales personnel who will attack the market from every corner applying appropriately the elements of the market mix. This will ensure that their competitors are not given enough space to device new strategies.
Works Cited
Barret, Amy. “Staying on Top: Johnson and Johnson case Study”. Business week, May 6 (2003): 177-182
Cravens, David and Piercy, Nigel. “Strategic Marketing”. McGraw Hill. 9th edition. 2009.
Grönroos, Christian. “Relationship Approach to Marketing in Service Contexts: The Marketing and Organisational Behavior Interface”. Journal of Business Research, Vol. 20, (1982): 3-12.
Johlke, Mark and Dale Duhan. “Testing Competing Models of Sales Force Communication”. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management. Vol. 21 (4), (2000): 265-277.
Kohli, Jaworski. “Market orientation: Antecedents and consequences”. Journal of Marketing, 57, (3) (1993): 53-81.