Omnichannel Marketing in a Pharmaceutical Company – How to Optimally Reach the Customers in the COVID-19 Era?
Kaiponen, Tommi (2021)
Kaiponen, Tommi
2021
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2021111520318
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2021111520318
Tiivistelmä
With the COVID-19 pandemic, the pharmaceutical companies have been forced to shift their focus on digital marketing and targeting their customers in a more personalized manner. Due to the strict regulations of the pharmaceutical industry and the complexity created by these regulations, the digital marketing approach has not been applied to its fullest extent earlier. Finding and using optimal and appropriate medium in delivering promotions and right information to the customers has become a challenge for the pharmaceutical companies along with digitalization and virtual interactions.
The marketing activities concentrating to digitally focused approach has caused uncertainty on message resonance due to nuances getting lost in virtual engagements compared to face-to-face interactions. The physicians are to some extent dissatisfied towards pharmaceutical companies digital interactions, because the companies mainly offer promotional information about their products instead of education related to clinical practice desired by the physicians.
The topic of this Master´s thesis is related to a real-life business need with a purpose to answer to the following research question: “What kind of an omnichannel solution model could work for a pharmaceutical company?”. The research question got answered by conducting a research which aim was to build an omnichannel model for customer interactions for a pharmaceutical marketing company, to test the model and reflect it back to existing theory as well as propose potential next steps to improve the model for the future use.
As the omnichannel marketing aims to deliver consistent, integrated and personalized experience for the customer regardless of the used channel or device the constructive approach used in this thesis focused on providing and testing a solution for enhancing the customer engagement with relevant content offering by utilizing the channel offering used by the company. The constructed model fulfilled the set expectations and was proven to be functional and useful for the company. Due to confidentiality reasons the constructed model along with the functionality findings is classified and cannot be accessed by anyone outside the company.
As the society is currently dismantling the restrictions set during the COVID-19 pandemic, the model needs to be adjusted to fit the hybrid collaboration with the company and its customers to be able to fully fit for the future interactions and business needs.
The marketing activities concentrating to digitally focused approach has caused uncertainty on message resonance due to nuances getting lost in virtual engagements compared to face-to-face interactions. The physicians are to some extent dissatisfied towards pharmaceutical companies digital interactions, because the companies mainly offer promotional information about their products instead of education related to clinical practice desired by the physicians.
The topic of this Master´s thesis is related to a real-life business need with a purpose to answer to the following research question: “What kind of an omnichannel solution model could work for a pharmaceutical company?”. The research question got answered by conducting a research which aim was to build an omnichannel model for customer interactions for a pharmaceutical marketing company, to test the model and reflect it back to existing theory as well as propose potential next steps to improve the model for the future use.
As the omnichannel marketing aims to deliver consistent, integrated and personalized experience for the customer regardless of the used channel or device the constructive approach used in this thesis focused on providing and testing a solution for enhancing the customer engagement with relevant content offering by utilizing the channel offering used by the company. The constructed model fulfilled the set expectations and was proven to be functional and useful for the company. Due to confidentiality reasons the constructed model along with the functionality findings is classified and cannot be accessed by anyone outside the company.
As the society is currently dismantling the restrictions set during the COVID-19 pandemic, the model needs to be adjusted to fit the hybrid collaboration with the company and its customers to be able to fully fit for the future interactions and business needs.