AstraZeneca's COVID-19 Response and Marketing Strategies

The assignment provides a detailed analysis of AstraZeneca's marketing strategies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It includes research on the company's partnerships with Sanofi and GSK for vaccine development, as well as their efforts to repurpose cancer medicines for COVID-19 patients. The assignment also explores the impact of these marketing efforts on the company's market share and customer satisfaction.

Marketing Essentials

Introduction
In an Organisation, marketing department is one of the most important departments
since it deals with the consumers or buyers and they are the significant stakeholders of
any Organisation. After all, if there was no consumer, the business would not even
exist. For this report, AstraZeneca was chosen for assessing different marketing
functions, the way they unite with others to create a sustainable marketing strategy will
be covered. Short review of current marketing trends, concepts, key marketing
functions, and significance of these marketing functions, their roles and responsibilities
within AstraZeneca will be discussed. Moreover, how these marketing functions
interconnect with other Organisational functions within AstraZeneca will also be
analysed.
Company Overview
AstraZeneca plc. Is British- Swedish intercontinental pharmaceutical and
Biopharmaceutical Company? Its head office is in Cambridge, England. AstraZeneca
has a collection of products for crucial illness areas containing cancer, cardiovascular,
gastrointestinal, infection, neuroscience, respiratory and inflammation. AstraZeneca AB,
the Swedish branch of the company, is a subordinate of AstraZeneca plc. The company
was established in 1999 through the coalition of the Swedish Astra AB and the British
Zeneca Group.

Section 1: Describing marketing and its connection with other
functions
Brief overview on the market trend and concepts followed by AstraZeneca.
Definition of Marketing: The procedure by which firms generate utility for consumer or
buyer and set up well built connection with buyers or consumers so that they can gain
advantage in exchange for their services or products (Kotler and Armstrong, 2013). The
activities of marketing is all about building everlasting connections with consumers or
buyers and construct customer equity.
According to a work done by Lin, Li, and Wang in 2017, the directions and trends are
constantly changing over the centuries and it will continue to change in the future. The
market trends are now different than how it used to be. But the companies and
Organisation tends to adapt with this dynamic trends and directions. AstraZeneca is
doing this as well. As a trainee marketing officer, the marketing trends I noticed in the
pharmaceutical field and AstraZeneca’s followed concepts to respond to these trends
are:
Achieving Scientific Leadership: In the pharmaceutical field, the companies are
constantly focusing their science for new kind of innovations and advance their
pipelines. AstraZeneca is also doing the same. They are concentrating on inventive
science on three therapy areas, a variety of drug modalities unfolding drug platforms
and new automations. They are also reinforcing their ability to complement targeted
medication to patient those need them most.
Return to Growth: Engaging with the stakeholders for the betterment of the
Organisation, authorizing unfolding markets to deliver better and wider access to
patients with inventive and targeted impartial pricing plan and operations are important
in this field. AstraZeneca is doing these things together with association with industry,
government and academia to discover ways to bring new medications to market more
swiftly and systematically.

Be a great place to work: Code of ethics, transparency, wider access to healthcare,
utilizing different outlooks, produce well-functioning culture and steadfast learning are
necessary in every workplace. AstraZeneca focuses on these issues properly. Also their
‘No tolerance’ policy on bribery, employees contemplating diversity of the communities
in which they work should be noted.
Distinguish the key marketing functions and research roles and
responsibilities from AstraZeneca’s context
Marketing functions has several roles and responsibilities which have to be satisfied for
operating an Organisation or company properly. These functions are crucial because
other divisions’ works are also interrelated with the marketing division. These functions
along with their roles and responsibilities are discussed below:
Examine the market and capacity of company: AstraZeneca’s marketing team
constantly analyses the needs and state of the market. It also analyses its capacity and
potential strengths, vulnerabilities, possibilities, outer and inner threats using different
marketing models.
Market segmentation and targeting: Analysis by Goncharuk and Getman in 2014
disclosed that the sales manager, key opinion leaders, medical science agents and the
medical representative are the consumer of the marketing process. But the medical
representatives are considered to be the main consumer of the marketing process and
they also get added utilities.
Develop attractive services: Medical representatives are exposed to several added
utilities. Such as: marketing tactics training arranged by product managers, promotional
and non- promotional materials for the patients, savings card enables their cooperation
with doctors for patients betterment etc. Also, they are constantly focusing on research
and development for discovering and inventing new kind of medications.
Promoting the products through different media: AstraZeneca has their own profiles
in every social media. They also focuses on inbound marketing for the medical
representatives, like arranging web casts with international speakers, training programs
for doctors, regular assessment that the doctors perform in the trainings.

Examine AstraZeneca’s marketing function’s interrelation with other
functions of the Organisation
In any Organisation, marketing functions are associated with other functions of the
Organisation. So, if the marketing function doesn’t operate properly, the work of the
other functions relying on it will slow down and hamper the overall performance of the
Organisation. As a trainee marketing officer. Interrelation between these functions in
AstraZeneca those I have found out, is discussed below:
Management Department: This department oversees the whole Organisation.
Marketing provides them the contemporary scenario of the market and the ways of
dealing things in the customer management section. As customers are a significant part
of the Organisation, these departments’ tactics has to align with each other for
successful result.
Finance Department: Finance department is responsible for taking financial and
investment decisions of an Organisation, creating budgets, and managing equity and
debts (McDonald and Wilson, 2011). Marketing department provides data about future
consumer prospective, sales and demand statistics to the finance department. Finance
department is also responsible for funding other departments including marketing
department.
Research and Development Department: This department is works on upgrading,
inventing new medications for new diseases, discovering new possibilities for the
medicines. Marketing department is responsible for promoting these new services as
well as ensuring their availability to the consumers.
Human Resource Department: This department is concerned with recruiting
employees for an Organisation. Human Resource Department turns to marketing
department for the qualities and attributes of an employee wanted by consumers in the
customer management process.

Importance of the marketing functions
It is true that a company or an Organisation doesn’t necessarily need a marketing
department to oversee marketing activities, but it will be exposed to some threats in this
approach (McDonald and Wilson, 2011). Since AstraZeneca is one of the largest
pharmaceuticals company in the world, it does pay a lot of attention towards its
marketing functions. The importance of these functions is given below:
Setting up a link between consumer and the company: Marketing helps to generate
sales and set up everlasting connections with the consumers (Kotler and Armstrong,
2013). AstraZeneca has already gained trusts from its consumers all over the world also
plans on gaining more in the future.
Contributes to get to the Organisational goals: The marketing team combines its
goals with other departments to reach to the Organisations’ common goals. It assists all
the departments i.e., finance department, human resource department, research and
development department etc. to outreach the ultimate goal. Marketing department also
needs assistance from these departments as well.
Innovation: Marketing department collects data on the consumer’s characteristics
needs, demands and suggests research and development department to create
medications according to these data. Thus they create new medications development
plan.

Section 2: Creating a marketing plan
Executive Summary
The world of business is dynamic. Its constantly changing nature makes it hard for an
Organisation to maintain a static nature in their marketing plan. So, the Organisations
have to make modifications in their marketing plan to adapt to these characteristics of
the business world. AstraZeneca is also working hard to come up with new strategies to
reach to its ultimate goal as well as putting up a good fight with its rival companies that
are also striving to survive in this competition. The most unique and attractive ideas
always wins in such environment. So it is important to come up with such strategies to
become the victor. We will come up with a strategy for an existing service which is
already provided by AstraZeneca to gain competitive advantage and sustainability.
Objective of the marketing plan
AstraZeneca will mainly focus on to their current consumers as well as potential
customers. In these days of innovation and technologies, modifying the capacity of
drugs by research and development has become a common thing in the
pharmaceuticals industry. The consumers loyal to this company are always looking
forward to these advancements. We will set goals for the new marketing plan so that the
target achieving becomes more systematic.
 Focusing more on discovering the perfect vaccine for COVID- 19
 To capture more consumers’ attention by doing more promotional campaigns
 Focusing more on digital marketing through social media platforms
 Expand market shares by 8 per cent within a year
Evidence based marketing scan
Reduced price of the medicines with better outputs will fascinate the customers. Since
there are more unemployed people compared to normal situation due to the pandemic,
it will be a good idea to distribute medicines with lower to no price to the people who
needs medication but cannot afford it. Also, emphasizing on its logo while donating
necessary supplies will definitely increase the brand value.

Effective marketing strategy to attain the objectives
Compare and evaluate a competitive product with the chosen product using 7Ps
of marketing
AstraZeneca is one of the largest pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies.
One of the strongest competitors of this company is GlaxoSmithKline, which is also a
UK based company providing pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical services and also
considered as one of most competent ones at it. As a trainee marketing officer, I have
noticed that GlaxoSmithKline is also researching on discovering the vaccine for COVID-
19. They also promoting their researches, their progress and people are getting
involved with them as well. Now the comparison and evaluation them using 7ps
approach is given below:
Elements AstraZeneca GlaxoSmithKline
Product/ Service AstraZeneca was assigned to
make 100 million doses for the
third phase of testing potential
doses of vaccine to UK’s NHS.
UK government entered a
contract with GlaxoSmithKline
for 60 million doses of
vaccine.
Price AstraZeneca along with
Emergent BioSolutions signed
up a US$87 million contract to
produce doses of the Oxford
University's adenovirus-based
COVID-19 vaccine especially for
the US market.
GlaxoSmithKline decided to
enter a $2.1 billion deal with
the US to process 100 million
doses of the vaccine.
Place For now the researches are
taking place mainly in UK
associated with USA. They are
also supplying to some
countries in Europe. But once
the research is over and are
successful in making the
GlaxoSmithKline has signed
up contracts with both UK
government and US. But as
soon as they contentedly
discover the vaccine through
research and development,
they plan on allocating them

ultimate vaccine, they plan on
supplying them all over the
world.
around the globe.
Promotion AstraZeneca declared to donate
PPE, along with 9 million face
mask to assist numerous
international health
Organisations. It also assisted
GlaxoSmithKline and University
of Cambridge to establish a
laboratory which has the ability
to 30000 tests a day to
determine COVID- 19.
GlaxoSmithKline,
AstraZeneca and University of
Cambridge collaborated to set
up a lab for testing COVID-
19. It is also collaborating with
various Organisations and
institutions but they are not
expecting any profit from
these activities. Any profit will
be used to fund for further
researches.
People The researchers under
AstraZeneca are constantly
searching for the absolute
vaccine for COVID- 19. Also the
people on whom the vaccine are
tested in different stage playing
a big role on achieving this
objectives.
GlaxoSmithKline is
cooperating different
Organisation to widen the
scope of their research and
more people are getting
involved for the development
of the vaccines.
Process AstraZeneca is working in both
inside and outside of UK for
making the vaccine suitable for
all kinds of people.
GlaxoSmithKline is working
with different Organisations all
over the world for the ultimate
vaccine.
Physical Evidence All of their activities regarding
COVID 19 are being promoted
and people are willingly
participating in the development
of the vaccine all over the world.
GlaxoSmithKline is
conducting research based
work on people volunteering
for it, Also, the lab is also
being used for conducting

tests related determining
COVID- 19.
STP Analysis
The full form of STP is Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning, which is part of the
customer driven marketing strategy. Nowadays, all the businesses are customer
oriented. Businesses must impress the customers by offering them unique products and
services, then hold onto them and expand by providing greater utility. AstraZeneca also
has to use this strategy to fulfil the objectives of the marketing plan. As a trainee
marketing officer, I recommend the strategy given below:
Segmentation: Potential customers must be narrated in respect of their wants, their
acceptance, price expectation, their convenient distribution channel, and their product
expectation (Brassington and Pettitt, 2012), Depending on the current circumstances
and marketing plan, AstraZeneca should divide the patients for those it is creating
medications into three segments. The segments are COVID patients, non- COVID
patients, and patients with multiple serious diseases along with COVID. Moreover, the
physiques of people living in different countries are also different from each other due to
the different environment, their race, food habit, upbringing etc. So, while developing
vaccines, they should consider these factors for the best possible output.
Targeting: Businesses are always searching for untried demand in the marketplace,
since they have been treated poorly by the rivals and thus, they find out the most
benefitting segments to serve. Based on segmentation, AstraZeneca should examine
the performance of each of the segments and identify the most profitable ones. They
should also focus on the least profitable ones by finding out the reasons for such
performance and concentrating on the ways of improvement. Also, they should include
more segments that they did not consider before but has shown great potential. They
can consider the researches for the vaccine of COVID as non- profit activities cause it
will create a bad impact on their brand value. They should focus more on the discovery
rather than the profit.

Positioning: Marketer has to create their positioning tactics carefully so that it can
upgrade the image and understanding of their products since customers are always
comparing and they are the main critics of any products or services (Camillery, 2018).
AstraZeneca have to provide high quality services and product in every segment so that
consumers will be happy to pay a bit extra. By focusing more on research and
development, increasing the performance of the medications, also promoting them to
consumers through different medias while making comparison with competitor’s
products and showcasing their uniqueness can bring about a lot of attention, They can
also promote awareness for the COVID- 19 pandemic via medias as well as encourage
everyone to participate in the different stage of vaccine testing so that they can achieve
their objective quickly.
Strategies on resource utilization and creating budget
The total budget for this marketing plan will be 200 million pounds. We will allocate this
fund for different sections. Since research and development is the most important task
in this field, it will be prioritized more than other sections. There will be a balance
between the funds of other section. The allocation is shown below.
Section Amount (in million pounds)
Research and development £87
Editorial and digital media £33
Social media and digital marketing £30
Sponsorship £30
Miscellaneous £20
Total £200
Monitoring and controlling measures:
Monitoring the performance to find out the deviations between expected and actual
performance and taking proper measure to narrow down the deviations to control the
outcome is crucial. As a trainee marketing officer, the recommended measures are
given below:

Continuous observation on market share: According to a research conducted by
Moghaddam and Foroughi in 2012, firms aims to increase market share to attain
substantial scale in its performance and enhanced profitability and effective marketing
strategy helps to achieve this goal. One of the objectives of this marketing plan is to
attain 8 per cent market shares at the end of the year. So, the company should be
engaged in the continuous process of supervising their market shares so that they can
take immediate action if there is even slight deviation. The market shares should not be
decreased no matter what. It will become hard for the company to recover if the market
share rate drops because of the rigorous competition.
Positive feedback from the volunteers: It is believed that by enhancing customer
satisfaction it will lead to increased retention of the existing customers as well as new
customer and improved market share rate (Rego, Morgan, and Fornell, 2013). The
volunteers that are participating in the vaccine testing research for COVID- 19, positive
feedback on their health condition and recovery from COVID- 19, as well as alleviating
the risk of influencing other diseases in the body will create a great impression on the
brand. The brand value will be increased, resulting in more trust from the consumers
and increased rate of market share, which is also an objective of this market plan.
Conclusion
In these days of marketing, satisfaction of consumers or buyers comes first. That’s why
marketing has become customer oriented rather than product oriented. In this report, we
have seen different marketing function in the context of AstraZeneca. It is one of the
biggest pharmaceuticals companies in the world, so it is quite obvious how much they
value their customers’ feedbacks. As a trainee marketing officer, I think this is a
company with a very well structured marketing plan which can be rivalled to only few
Organisations and companies. They are constantly using scientific methods to develop
their products as well as keeping mind of the customer satisfaction which is very tough
thing to do. The way they critically examine their customers’ needs and wants, it is truly
impressive. That’s why they are remarkable and other companies and Organisations
look up to them.

References
Kotler, P. and Armstrong, G., 2013. Principles of Marketing. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
Lin, X., Li, Y. and Wang, X., 2017. Social commerce research: Definition, research
themes and the trends. International Journal of Information Management, 37(3), pp.190-
201.
Goncharuk, A.G. and Getman, M., 2014. Benchmarking to improve a strategy and
marketing in pharmaceuticals. Benchmarking: An International Journal.
McDonald, M. and Wilson, H., 2011. Marketing Plans. 7th ed. Amsterdam: Wiley.
updates, C., 2020. COVID-19 Response And Updates | GSK US. [online] Us.gsk.com.
Available at: <https://us.gsk.com/en-us/media/covid-19-response-and-updates/>
[Accessed 26 November 2020].
Brassington, F. and Pettitt, S., 2012. Essentials Of Marketing. 3rd ed.
Gibbs, P., Pashiardis, P. and Ivy, J., 2008. A new higher education marketing mix: the
7Ps for MBA marketing. International Journal of educational management.
Rego, L.L., Morgan, N.A. and Fornell, C., 2013. Reexamining the market share–
customer satisfaction relationship. Journal of Marketing, 77(5), pp.1-20.
2020. [online] Available at: <https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/31/us-agrees-to-pay-sanofi-
and-gsk-2point1-billion-for-100-million-doses-of-coronavirus-vaccine.html> [Accessed
26 November 2020].
ITV News. 2020. Astrazeneca To Test One Of Its Cancer Medicines For Covid-19
Patients | ITV News. [online] Available at: <https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2020-04-
14/cambridge-based-astrazeneca-to-test-one-of-its-cancer-medicines-for-covid-19-
patients> [Accessed 26 November 2020].
ITV News. 2020. Astrazeneca To Test One Of Its Cancer Medicines For Covid-19
Patients | ITV News. [online] Available at: <https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2020-04-

14/cambridge-based-astrazeneca-to-test-one-of-its-cancer-medicines-for-covid-19-
patients> [Accessed 26 November 2020].
BBC News. 2020. Coronavirus Vaccine: UK Signs Deal With GSK And Sanofi. [online]
Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53577637> [Accessed 26 November
2020].
Cambridge Independent. 2020. Coronavirus: Astrazeneca Donates Nine Million Face
Masks And Steps Up Covid-19 Drugs Research. [online] Available at:
<https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/business/coronavirus-astrazeneca-donates-
nine-million-face-masks-and-steps-up-covid-19-drugs-research-9104685/> [Accessed
26 November 2020].
BBC News. 2020. Coronavirus: Astrazeneca To Begin Making Potential Vaccine.
[online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52917118> [Accessed 26
November 2020].
Moghaddam, F.M. and Foroughi, A., 2012. The influence of marketing strategy
elements on market share of firms. International Journal of Fundamental Psychology
and Social Sciences, 2(1), pp.19-24.
Camilleri, M.A., 2018. Market segmentation, targeting and positioning. In Travel
marketing, tourism economics and the airline product (pp. 69-83). Springer, Cham.
Largestcompanies.com. 2020. Astrazeneca AB - Detailed Information -
Largestcompanies. [online] Available at:
<https://www.largestcompanies.com/company/AstraZeneca-AB-25> [Accessed 26
November 2020].