Merck’s Business Strategy Case Study

Merck & Co., Inc., incorporated in 1970, is a global healthcare company. The Company offers health solutions through its prescription medicines, vaccines, biological therapies, and animal health products, which it markets directly and through its joint ventures. The Company's Pharmaceutical segment includes human health pharmaceutical and vaccine products marketed either directly by the Company or through joint ventures. The Company has operations in Pharmaceutical, Animal Health, Alliances, and Healthcare Services segments. Their human health pharmaceutical products consist of therapeutic and preventive agents, generally sold by prescription, for the treatment of human disorders.

Social impact:

Life changing: provides hope

Emotional: reduces anxiety, wellness, therapeutic value, badge value, provides access

Functional: reduces risks, avoids hassles, quality, integrates, variety

Biopharma:

A firm assumes complete control of the biopharmaceutical model's research, development, and commercialization (DDC) operations. Under this approach, the firm develops the product internally and retains commercial skills to deliver the product to patients.

Best in class services:

When a firm brings a product to market, it must first create a compelling product and then field a workforce capable of manufacturing it at a competitive price. Neither task is simple to perform effectively; much managerial effort and scholarly study have been dedicated to these issues. Nevertheless, providing a service involves another aspect: managing clients, who are consumers of the service and may also contribute to its creation.

Regular replacement:

It includes items that must be replaced on a regular basis; the user cannot reuse them. Consumables are products utilized by people and companies and must be returned regularly due to wear and tear or depletion. Additionally, they may be described as components of a final product consumed or irreversibly changed throughout the production process, including semiconductor wafers and basic chemicals.

Performance-based contracting:

Performance-based contracting (PBC), sometimes referred to as performance-based logistics (PBL) or performance-based acquisition, is a method for achieving quantifiable supplier performance. A PBC strategy focuses on developing strategic performance measures and the direct correlation of contract payment to success against these criteria. Availability, dependability, maintainability, supportability, and total cost of ownership are all standard criteria. This is accomplished mainly via incentive-based, long-term contracts with precise and quantifiable operational performance targets set by the client and agreed upon by contractual parties.

Long tail:

The long tail is a strategy that allows businesses to realize significant profit out of selling low volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The term was coined in 2004 by Chris Anderson, who argued that products in low demand or with low sales volume can collectively make up market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters but only if the store or distribution channel is large enough.

Licensing:

A formal agreement in which the owner of the copyright, know-how, patent, service mark, trademark, or other intellectual property grants a licensee the right to use, manufacture, and sell copies of the original. These agreements often restrict the licensee's scope or area of operation, define whether the license is exclusive or non-exclusive, and stipulate whether the licensee will pay royalties or another kind of compensation in return. While licensing agreements are often used to commercialize the technology, franchisees also utilize them to encourage the sale of products and services.

Make and distribute:

In this arrangement, the producer creates the product and distributes it to distributors, who oversee the goods' ongoing management in the market.

Healthcare:

The prevention, treatment, and management of disease and maintaining mental and physical well-being via the medical and allied health professionals' services. It includes diagnostic, preventative, remedial, and therapeutic service providers such as physicians, nurses, hospitals, and other private, public, and volunteer organizations. Additionally, it comprises producers of medical equipment and pharmaceuticals, as well as health insurance companies.

Lock-in:

The lock-in strategy?in which a business locks in consumers by imposing a high barrier to transferring to a competitor?has acquired new traction with New Economy firms during the last decade.

White label:

The term white label refers to a product or service bought by a reseller who rebrands it to show that the new owner developed it. Frequently, white-label goods are mass manufactured. Thus, white-label goods are produced by one firm and sold by another under their brand and model number. For instance, most Dell computer screens are created by third-party manufacturers yet have the Dell brand and model number.

Low touch:

Historically, developing a standard touch sales model for business sales required recruiting and training a Salesforce user who was tasked with the responsibility of generating quality leads, arranging face-to-face meetings, giving presentations, and eventually closing transactions. However, the idea of a low-touch sales strategy is not new; it dates all the way back to the 1980s.