Pharm-Med Enterprises: Affordable Prescription Meds for All! - Essay Sample

Introduction

Pharm-Med Enterprises is a medical supplies store whose main objective is to provide its customers with prescription medications at competitive prices in the market. The business focuses on offering prescription medicines to the consumers at reduced prices through ensuring that it maintains efficient operations. Realizing this objective requires targeting a certain market segment, which includes the customers with a greater capability of paying for their medications, especially the senior citizens. This attribute is critical in providing additional efficiencies as the business is capable of avoiding cash flow disruptions that are usually associated with payments through insurance. Pharm-Med Enterprises executes its operations through multiple stores that are aimed at serving the visiting customers and mail order customers. The business has through the employment of knowledgeable and friendly personnel that is capable of driving repeat business that increased the enterprise's profitability. More importantly, Pharm-Med Enterprises focuses on appealing more and more to the convenience and sense of value among the customers.

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Advertising is undoubtedly one of the methods utilized in promoting productivity in any business. Pharm-Med Enterprises seeks to leverage on social media advertising as a way of increasing its reach to its targeted customer group. The marketing strategy adopted by Pharm-Med Enterprises will be focused on targeted advertisements, which appeals to the sense of the value of the consumers. The objective of the marketing campaign, especially through various social media sites, aims at increasing awareness of the business within its target market. More importantly, Pharm-Med Enterprises will adopt the sales strategy of establishing long-term relationships with consumers. To realize this, the business seeks to offer medical supplies at superior prices while ensuring that the stocks are replenished towards facilitating quick shipment and availability for pick-up. More importantly, superior customer service will be of great priority for the business.

Social Media Goals

Running a successful business requires clear strategies, particularly on how short-term and long-term goals and objectives will be realized. With the recent increase in technological advancements, digital health has become a common phenomenon, and social media provides a perfect foundation for a successful pharmacy business. For Pharm-Med Enterprises, numerous goals need to be implemented as far as the use of social media is concerned. The goals need to embrace the SMART approach, which implies that they should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound (Ding, Eliashberg & Stremersch, 2016). For instance, it will be crucial to increase the awareness of the business' brand on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. This would have the capacity to improve the follower count of the business by at least 40 percent within the next six months.

Another goal of the social media use includes enhancing research on the target customers. More than 70 percent of the world's population is on social media (Ding, Eliashberg & Stremersch, 2016). Increasing its media presence gives Pharm-Med Enterprises a better understanding of the targeted audience, which provides a clearer idea of what they value and the type of channels they utilize in consuming content. Research evidence has revealed that more than 62 percent of people argue that they are capable of purchasing products from brands they follow on social media (Ding, Eliashberg & Stremersch, 2016). This is an indication that social media provides tremendous potential for the business, which creates additional revenue and profitability.

Pharm-Med Enterprises will utilize social media in creating largely engaging and unique content. Most pharmaceutical businesses have lost customers due to a high number of promotional messages on social media sites (King, 2015). To this end, Pharm-Med Enterprises will focus on figuring out the specific type of content preferred and valued by the audience to avoid sharing the right content with the wrong group of customers. The business may consider sharing content that educates the consumers, provides customer testimonials and displays the enterprise's engagement in the community via market events and vendor fairs, among others. The creation of engaging content is critical in establishing constructive conversations with consumers (King, 2015). This attribute is also associated with increased loyalty from followers through customer engagement. More importantly, Pharm-Med Enterprises will focus on ensuring that it keeps up with the constantly changing social media algorithms. There is a need for a greater level of consistency in terms of content posting per the expectations of the consumers.

Market Comparables Analysis

The medical supplies industry is composed of diverse products and brands that target different groups of customers. Although Pharm-Med Enterprises offers its customers with many medical products, the brand of focus in this paper is known as the Vicodin, which is utilized in dealing with moderate and severe pain among the senior citizens. Indeed, the pharmaceutical retail businesses have been transforming the recent past (Ngai, Tao & Moon, 2015). One of the most inevitable attributes in the pharmaceutical industry is that Medicare continues to grow. The American population is aging, which is an implication that the beneficiaries of Medicare have become extremely important.

Currently, over 45 million citizens in the United States have been signed up to Medical plans, with each of the senior citizens aged 50 - 64 receiving at least 27.6 prescriptions on average in 2017 (Shareef et al., 2019). The prescriptions are more than twice that obtained by adults aged between 26 - 49. The implication is that the senior population presents a large market segment for pharmacies like Pharm-Med Enterprises. The business needs to focus more on the seniors, which requires listening more to their concerns and determining how they can be able to access medical supplies to deal with common health problems like pain (Ngai, Tao & Moon, 2015). Pharm-Med Enterprises should aim at helping seniors in reviewing their path options as a way of ensuring that they make better-informed decisions.

The pharmaceutical industry has also witnessed increasing importance of the preferred Pharm-Med Enterprises gains access to a larger potential customer base. Medicare has become part of the preferred pharmacy networks, which has increased to 98 percent from 7 percent between 2011 and 2018 (Shareef et al., 2019). As a way of gaining and maintaining access to preferred networks. Pharm-Med Enterprises may need to partner with pharmacy services administrative organization (PSAO) as a way of ensuring that it accesses preferred pharmacy networks important for the business (King, 2015).

More importantly, the pharmaceutical industry has witnessed increased dominance of the specialty medications. Biopharmaceutical manufacturers have continued with their efforts to create more drugs targeting specific diseases and health problems. This has contributed to the skyrocketing of the specialty drug market. Pharm-Med Enterprises should consider trying obtaining specialty drugs that are required by the targeted market featuring senior citizens. The business should also focus on the expansion of its services towards matching the medication needs of the target market. The Vicodin drug prescribed in dealing with pain problems among the senior citizens lies under the Opioids (narcotic drugs). The other three brands that may rival the Vicodin are OxyContin, Percocet, and Lortab. These drugs have been effective in relieving pain, although they are associated with such side effects as sleepiness, constipation, and nausea. The drugs may also lead to addiction among seniors and other users.

Societal Norms

As pointed out earlier, the pharmaceutical industry has undergone tremendous transformations. Currently, pharmacy practice is not just engaged in providing advice and medicine to consumers who consume them and adhere to expert advice without question. Instead, pharmacy practice has grown to a level whereby both the public and pharmacist are capable of being conceptualized and considered to form an integral part of social processes (Sloane et al., 2015). The implication is that the pharmacist and the public engage in interactions as social individuals who are interdependent in society.

There are "rules" and "norms" that are utilized in regulating appropriate and acceptable behavior. These norms play a central role in facilitating necessary interactions between patients and pharmacists. Although the two players dictate how the industry work, regulatory forces have a significant influence, particularly in terms of maintaining social order, as well as preventing potential anarchy and wholesale societal decay (Shareef et al., 2019). The notion is that the actions of pharmacists are consistent with the professional requirements, with the actions, feelings, expectations, and beliefs of the consumers being attributable to social forces that are quite complex.

To a greater extent, pharmacists have been perceived as underused resources for information and advice that is related to medicine and health in general. This attribute has been considered to be a serious challenge in public. Consumers require health care advice that is characterized by great professionalism, which requires pharmacists to possess the relevant knowledge for consumers. In the global space, there is a need to overcome language and cultural barriers to meet the medical needs of the target market. It may be necessary to bring on board local partners that are capable of providing local know-how regarding culture and language (Sloane et al., 2015). The performance of research is also necessary as a way of identifying potential hiccups relating to culture and language, which would give the business a competitive edge.

Advertising

Social media has become an integral tool utilized in promoting pharmacy business. It greatly helps individuals in promoting their expertise through engaging regarding various services and products while raising the business in the local, national, and even global space. Social media is important in ensuring that pharmacists remain relevant and easily accessible as it may be utilized as a platform of advancing health debates that are ongoing as well as sharing critical insights among different groups of targeted customers. The fact that social media is free makes it a powerful tool for marketing. The idea is that the most appropriate content is necessary for sharing on the appropriate websites. Different social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter will be essential for Pharm-Med Enterprises in terms of showcasing the achievements of the business in the target market.

Because many businesses utilize social media for advertising, Pharm-Med Enterprises needs to differentiate itself through the creation of a distinctive verbal and visual identity through the use of videos and pictures that are capable of grabbing attention. There is a greater need for being authentic, which includes avoiding formulaic attributes whereby social media platforms are selected with great care and prudence. To promote the business, the Pharm-Med Enterprises staff will be encouraged in terms of using different social networking sites towards posting their thoughts while sharing posts regarding health initiatives that are useful in promo...