International Marketing Plan for Lebsa’s European Market Expansion

Authors

Ayoub, Catherine
Horz, Mike  

Abstract

The pharmaceutical industry is predominated by high restriction in every facet of doing business, especially for product patent protection. The environment and its Generic players have changed over the last years towards higher competition from Asia resulting into new environmental drivers towards Europe which challenges local manufacturers of small niche pharmaceutical suppliers like Lebsa. The Spanish company, found in the change process of implementing a new technology, opened its borders to the digital age with the aim to increase the amount of yearly developed products and sales to international customers.
The Master Thesis deals now with one of those new products called Bilastine and with the research question of what marketing strategy should be defined for Lebsa being late in the development process to launch Bilastine to the European pharmaceutical market? Additionally, the Thesis is advised to consider the major topics of distribution through direct or third party, a global or regional strategy, an exclusivity agreement for third parties, a marketing and distribution agreement, and a communication plan.
The Generic and Medical Market was observed regarding entry barriers and competition to understand Lebsa´s supplier situation and its marketing regulation. Hereby, the key finding is that when the patent expires the first Generic drug manufacturer decides the deal. Lebsa as the supplier has to be chosen in advance for the registration process that is why being late is the key issue to be solved. Further, avoiding the worst case that the company is not capable to introduce the flow chemistry in the short, because technology implementation and being capable need time, we decided to connected Lebsa´s strengths by introducing a two level approach going first for Bilastine developed by the reactor manufacturing and later for the new synthetic root developed by flow chemistry. This way, after the analysis, the company profits from earlier awareness by entering the highly competitive but promising histamine market environment until the development of the synthetic root of higher value and margin, that as well has to be justified in terms of price regarding the country specific registration procedure, is finished. Besides, we examined Europe due to its diversity to launch to Germany based on the Pestel analysis and additional Generic related market material to narrow the strategy down to one specific target profile. With first customer interest of second sourcing coming mainly from Spain the international strategy we pointed out will first go to Spain, then to Germany and afterwards to the EUTop5 countries from histamine specialized customer to midsize niche drug manufacturer with a competitive marketing mix adapted to Germany in terms of successful pricing and brand awareness reach.
 

 

Director

Meyer, Jan-Hinrich 

Degree

IQS SM - Master’s Degree in International Marketing in a Digital Environment / International Marketing & Sales Management

Date

2020-06-02