Marketing Strategies and Planning - Case Study Example

A marketing strategy is a process in which an organization uses its limited resources to maximize its greatest opportunities with a hope to gain or retain a competitive advantage (Metcalfe & Warde, 2002). The CVS is a leader in the pharmaceutical services industry. This happens through the delivery of customer prescriptions. The company also helps customers to access medicines easily. Below is the market positioning map. According to the map, CVS Caremark offers high quality for a fair price compared to Walgreens.

Wal-Mart offers low quality at a very low price. CVS Caremark uses a number of marketing strategies to deal with its competitors. CVS Caremark is positioned in convenient locations to easy customer access. The company offers 24 hours service. These two strategies make CVS Caremark’s products easy to access especially for those who like frequent glossary shopping. The company’s biggest challenge is high competition in the market environment (Dibb & Simkin, 2008). CVS Caremark is working towards winning customer trust, confidence, and loyalty.

The company is using social media as a strong marketing tool. The company also gives customized offers from its local stores. CVS Caremark after reviewing its marketing strategies claimed that customers were more informed and involved in their healthcare products than ever. Walgreens Walgreens was a relatively small company a few years ago. However, the company has undergone a transformation which has made it prosperous. Walgreens developed a desire to pay more attention to the needs of its clients.

This was particularly done to the young mothers who had multiple children. This means the company was investing for more sales with these mothers in the coming days. The company also built strong internal relationships strategically. They included functional interdepartmental relationships. This is because the CEO of the company believed that relationships and connections are necessary for the entire company to develop. The company came up with results-minded and effective leadership. The leadership of the company understands the organization as a system, not as fragments.

This made it easier to conduct internal assessments. The leadership is goal oriented and very inspired. Wal-Mart Wal-Mart’s marketing entails flooding the market with their products and competitive pricing. This has made them get a large market share. Wal-Mart also offers a variety of products. The company has a strong online marketing team. However, the company has had negative publicity and is viewed as controversial by many clients. Flooding of these products in the market has raised concerns on the quality of the products (Metcalfe & Warde, 2002).

Advantages of CVS Caremark against Walgreens and Wal-Mart CVS Caremark has the largest market share compared to Walgreens or Wal-Mart. CVS Caremark has customer friendly prices and is well reachable by the largest segment of the market compared to the other leading competitors. The brand has a better reputation in the market compared to the rest. The future looks bright with strong prospects for the CVS Caremark. The forecast shows the company shall perform better in the future. The merger between CVS Caremark and PBM made the company to outdo its toughest competitor the Walgreens.

Disadvantages of CVS Caremark’s marketing strategies Poor customer retention compared to Walgreens has exposed the weakness of the company’s marketing effectiveness. Most of the customer retention methods have been outdated. The other major disadvantage is that net contract wins are extremely slow compared to that of the competitors. This has led to the loss of millions of dollars for the CVS Caremark.