The EU marketing environment: Pharmaceuticals and Japanese strategy

The marketing environment - those external forces that directly or indirectly influence an organisation's trading, acquisitions of inputs and generation of outputs, but over which the organisation has little or no control - is in marketing strategy acknowledged to be an important determinant of strategy selection. Recent changes within the European Union have illustrated the workings of these forces. In the emotive, highly competitive, multi-million dollar pharmaceuticals industry, the effect of the elements of the marketing environment are extensive, particularly for a Japanese player attempting to break into the European 'Single Market'. This article by Sally Dibb, Yvonne Russell and Lyndon Simkin describes the implications in pharmaceuticals of the broader, external trading environment and the marketing environment, using Japan's Sankyo as an illustrative case.