Pfizer's Marketing Plan: Segmentation, Target Audience, and Positioning

Marketing Plan
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Marketing Plan
Segmentation, Target Audience, and Positioning
The process of segmentation, targeting, and positioning refers to chronological order parts for market segmentation. The segmentation process entails the identification of the market that needs to be segmented. The process is characterized by identifying, selecting, and applying the bases to assist in the segmentation process and the development of the profiles. It involves dividing the market into distinct groups of customers using specific segmentation practices. The targeting process entails the determination of the customer group to focus the marketing efforts on. Positioning entails creating a product position and a marketing mix that will appeal most to the target audience.
These three marketing techniques form STP marketing, which is effective since it focuses on disintegrating the customer base into smaller groups that allow one to develop specific marketing strategies that engage the clients. According to statistics, approximately 59% of customers say that personalization significantly determines their shopping decisions. Another 44% of the shoppers indicated that a personalized shopping experience determined their potential to become repeat customers of a given brand. This marketing system is distinct from product-focused marketing that mainly focuses on marketing a product based on its specific characteristics to customer-focused marketing, designed to market products to satisfy the clients' expectations.
Pfizer’s Segmentation Approach
There are four significant types of audience segmentation. These include geographic, demographic, behavioral, and psychographic segmentation. Geographic segmentation entails dividing the audience based on their location, such as country, state, or region. Demographic segmentation involves dividing the audience based on their age, gender, income levels, and occupation. Behavioral segmentation involves dividing the audience based on how they interact with the business, what they purchase, and the frequency with which they make the purchase, among others. Psychographic segmentation involves categorizing the audience based on who they are, for example, their lifestyle, hobbies, activities, and opinions.
Pfizer pharmaceuticals utilize behavioral segmentation, broadly classified into human pharmaceuticals and animal health businesses. Besides, it also serves casual users, where it produces two-piece capsules that help in manufacturing prescriptions. Pfizer also targets over-the-counter purchases and customers who like nutritional supplements. The firm's pharmaceutical business segment encompasses products that manage cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. In addition, they also help in managing central nervous system disorders, infectious illnesses, and respiratory diseases. Other illnesses that the company's products managers include cancer, eye disease, urogenital conditions, endocrine disorders, and allergies. Pfizer's management can track any behavioral changes in purchases and make appropriate adjustments by segmenting its customers in terms of their purchasing behavior.
Pfizer’s Target Market
Pfizer’s primary target market refers to the company's main audience for the products they produce. Pfizer sells its pharmacological medications to a particular segment of people with diseases that will maximize its profitability. The company targets both male and female adults and children. The demographics of each of these segments include the income levels and the social status of the patients. In the United States, the primary customers are middle class people with incomes that range from $65,000 to $120,000. The company puts more focus on individuals with close relationships to the primary target. For example, it targets fathers and mothers since they have children they have to take care of and have to take care of their old parents who are also susceptible to diseases.
The company has invested significantly in advertisements in order to appeal more to its target consumers. They creatively reach out to their target customers in a manner that does not affect their image to the rest of the public. For example, in the company’s advertisement of Viagra, the management understood the taboo involved in openly talking about dysfunction. Consequently, they decided to approach the matter as a way of educating the population about erectile dysfunction. They used famous actors to talk about the problem on camera. The company had realized that a significant number of men were suffering silently, putting their marriages at risk. Therefore, the best way to reach out to this population and appeal to them was to approach them as an education program. By sensitizing the masses on the magic of the little blue pill, the company hit the mark and eventually made a name as they were associated with the product. Therefore, any man who thought about erectile dysfunction thought about Pfizer.
Positioning Statement
Positioning is the final step of the STP marketing framework and allows the company to set the product or service away from the competition into the target audience's minds. Competition is a joint event in any business environment. Therefore, any business should find a way to present themselves to the target population to make them unique. Businesses can use three positioning techniques to appeal to the market and attain a competitive edge. One of these is symbolic positioning, which entails enhancing the self-image, belongingness, or customers' pride. Functional positioning is an approach in which the business focuses on solving the customers' problems and providing genuine benefits. Finally, experiential positioning focuses on an emotional connection with the customers. Pfizer employs functional positioning because the main objective of taking drugs is to recover from the illness. Therefore, the company's positioning statement prioritizes consumer health and wellbeing while providing other social benefits.
The Marketing Mix
A marketing mix entails multiple areas that an organization can focus on in developing a comprehensive marketing plan. The term mainly covers the standard classification commenced as the four P's: product, price, placement, and promotion. Marketing professionals keep the four P's in mind, which helps them focus on things that matter. The marketing mix helps company management teams to make appropriate strategic decisions when presenting a new product to the market or revising the existing products. This strategy for effective marketing was introduced in 1960 by Jerome McCarthy, a marketing professor, and author. While each of the elements is treated independently, a successful organization knows how to incorporate the elements to achieve the organization's goals.
Pfizer is a multinational entity. Therefore, its key competitive advantage is the multinational operations that enable it to capitalize on multinational variations in economic performance. It can maximize on companies that perform well and supplement the earning with those that perform poorly to survive the fluctuating economic conditions. Despite operating in the biggest market for biopharmaceutical products in the United States, which has several challenges, the firm maintains profitability and business wroth. The company continues to face other unavoidable challenges, such as the expiration of patents. The main industry forces that the company has to consider while operating include supplier power, buyer power, competitive rivalry, the threat of substitution, and the threat of new entrants. These forces help to determine the intensity of competition that firms face.
A significant threat Pfizer faces, which influences its marketing mix, is the threat of new entrants. The film tackles this challenge by being innovative, building economies of scale, and spending money on research and development to ensure that the product developed is inspired by the consumer needs. A sector where established players keep defining the standards makes it difficult for new entrants to survive.
The drug manufacturing sector has numerous suppliers who can interfere with the profit margins that the company earns from its sales. Therefore, Pfizer can tackle the high bargaining power of these suppliers by establishing a proper supply chain with several suppliers. Secondly, the company can explore different raw material...