Assignment 2
Metabical Positioning and Communications Case Study
1. End consumer and health provider are the two primary groups involved in this
complex and long purchase decision-making process for Metabical. At the very
first step, end consumer must see a problem which kindle their interest to buy
a weight loss drug. There are many possibilities that can raise a person
awareness to buy a weight loss drug, it can be feeling pressure from society on
isolation because of overweight body size, a physician telling you about some
health issues that may occur due to weight, dissatisfied with the current
weight loss drug, etc. Once there is a problem recognition from the consumer,
then they will move to a research and information stage. This stage is critical
because there are thousands of weight loss drug in the market, each of them
try their best to present to the consumer they are different and better than
other brands, and this is now for consumer to carefully select the best one that
is suitable for them. In the information search stage, consumers will consider if
Metabical suits them and at the same time if they suits Metabical. In this case,
consumers will first think if Metabical suits them, they will compare their
desired weight to loss to the ability of Metabical can help them to loss, as well
to see if they fits into the target user of Metabical, since it works most
effectively on a persons’ weights between BMI 25 to 30. Then, the end users
will think if Metabical suits them from the features and benefits provides on
weight loss and hopefully with the minimal side effects. After gaining
information about Metabical, consumer may select Metabical and proceed to a
further step of information search. They may go through either internal or
external search, or both. The consumers will skim through his memory on
information they have already known about Metabical or other related weight
loss products they have experience, or previous product from Cambridge
Sciences Pharmaceuticals (CSP). Then they will go for external search, which is
to acquire information from outside source, including gather advises from
peers, family or going to a forums to ask for suggestion, or gather information
from catalogs and advertisements. After consumers have known enough information about Metabical, then they
will start their evaluation process on other alternatives comparing to
Metabical. Consumers will seek to find if Metabical can best to solve the
problem they recognize at the very beginning and able to reach their weight
loss goal most effectively. Arouse consumers purchase intention if they find
Metabical more superior than the other related products, then they will
consider where and how convenient Metabical can be purchase, after all these
procedures, a purchase act will be implement. The decision-making process
continues with the last step - post-purchase evaluation. After the consumer
have purchase Metabical, they will match their experience on Metabical to
their initial expectation, obviously if the consumer find Metabical below
expectation, dissatisfaction will occur and may result in losing customers or
even bad word of mouth. Therefore, it is crucial for Printup to oversee
consumer satisfaction on Metabical, and to maintain a long-term customer
relationship.
The decision making process for the second group, the healthcare providers is
somewhat similar but at the same time a bit different, they go through the
same procedures on decision-making process but looking for different things
during the process. Healthcare providers is not the end user of Metabical, but
they suggest their patients, which are the end user to buy the product.
Similarly, the healthcare providers must first see a problem on getting a weight
loss drug, examples are recognizing a need for introducing a new weight loss
drug, if many current patients are dissatisfied with the current weight loss drug
or number of overweight patients is increasing and asking for help to introduce
a weight loss drug, etc. Then, the healthcare providers will go through internal
and external search. In this case, sales representative will provide some
information on the healthcare providers external search as the sales
representatives will approach them personally according to Printup’s plan.
Once information is gather, this may trigger the health providers interest, and
to take a further step on comparing alternatives with Metabical, they must be
very deliberate on selecting the best weight loss drug for giving the best results
under a safe manner to their patients. Their consideration will take a longer time, because they act as a professional and to recommend a drug for their
patients. Their patients believe in their healthcare providers, so if Metabical
does not work as expectation, or have severe side effect, this will directly
affect the reputation of the healthcare providers. Going through the same
process, the healthcare providers will then implement their purchase decision
and continue with the post-purchase evaluation. The healthcare providers will
evaluate how effective Metabical works on their patients, if many patients are
returning and very satisfy about the drug, definitely the healthcare providers
will put Metabical in priority and to recommend it to their patients.
2. Segmentation of potential Metabical consumer is important, allows Printup to
better utilize resources and better match the needs of target customer, hence
get a higher chance of success. Printup may combines three types of
segmentation: Geographic segmentation, demographic segmentation and
psychographic segmentation. By geographic segmentation, Printup will define
which region of the U.S has the highest number of overweight person, so that
Printup can better distribute the product and resources, for example to send
more sales representatives to the healthcare providers in that particular
region, so as to reach a larger group of target customer. For demographic
segmentation, Printup should use some of the demographic variables, such as
age, gender, income, education level to determine how to better reach the
needs for target customers. In this case, Printup has already done some
research on percentage of U.S obesity person base on age, gender, income and
education level, therefore promotion of Metabical can be mainly focus on
those particular groups with the highest percentage of target customer. From
the data in the case, we can see women who between 55-64, with less than
high school education and income less than $25000 have the highest
percentage of overweight people, so that the promotion campaign should set
them as the target group and the goal is to make them to make an actual
purchase. For the best result, geographic and demographic segmentation
should incorporate with psychographic segmentation to help use the resources
more effectively, gather all the information and come up with the most common reason and benefits consumer are looking for, as well to find where
and how to allocate resources to attract target customers through different
market segmentation.
The optimal target customer for Metabical are overweight person weight
between BMI 25-30 and have a hope to make a change to get rid some of the
unwanted pounds. The second target customers are the healthcare providers
who will suggest Metabical to their overweight patients to get a healthier life.
Futhermore, push and pull strategy have been used to promote Metabical to
the end user through the healthcare providers. The healthcare providers will
introduce Metabical to their overweight patients, and telling them the benefits
of using Metabical, a pull strategy is used because this build up customers
demand for the product and then they will go to a pharmacy to purchase
Metabical. A push strategy can also be used if the healthcare providers act like
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