Advertising and New Customers

2. The weights for the five dimensions that the Heartland & Company focuses on should not be equal. As indicated in the beginning of the case document, the Supply Management Manager Walter A. Walsh and one of his buyers, Olivia Newcomb point out the company’s priorities which are cost reductions and long-term relationship. Also, the competitive advantage of cost reductions is usually based on excellent cost management, while the long-term relationships are supposed to build upon efficient and effective communication, which is an important part of wavelength. That is, the Heartland & Company is expected to put more weights on cost management and wavelength than those on other factors. Following that, improvements on technical support could also reduce costs, specifically assembly costs. Hence, it is reasonable to put more weights on technical support than those on the rest two elements, which are delivery and quality. According to the level of priority the Heartland & Company designates to each factor, I come up with the following weights: Cost management 30%, wavelength 30%, technical support 20%, delivery 10%, and quality 10%.

Direct-to-Consumer Advertisements have both good and bad aspects to it, as discussed previously. The question that comes to mind is whether or not the beneficial sides outweigh the bad ones in the eyes of consumers, physicians, and other healthcare providers. According to Kannan et al (1), 97 physicians of the 155 surveyed, reported that patients asked about a drug advertisement they had seen. Of those 97 physicians, 51 of them agreed that the drugs they questioned about were not useful for their condition. Only 51 physicians of the 155 thought that this would help strengthen the relationship between them and their patients. Rather, 82 doctors thought it would hurt the relationships. This could be due in part that the doctor would be declining

The shipping cost and/or unavailability of transportation between the plants and some locomotive locations will eliminate some of the routes due to cost inefficiency. These routes are the unacceptable routes and will not be considered for distribution from the specified plant. By removing unacceptable routes, Solutions Plus is able to build a linear programming solution to determine which plant/locomotive location combinations are optimal. Based on the shipping cost provided, the routes that are eliminated are as follows:

Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars advertising pharmaceutical drugs to consumers, medical journals, and healthcare providers. In fact, according to Mahon’s publication “Impact of Direct-To-Consumer Advertising on Healthcare Providers and Consumers,” for every one dollar that pharmaceutical companies spent on advertising, the sales quadrupled to a shocking $4.20 (417). What is even more frightening, is that this extremely profitable return on advertisements is continuing to grow as pharmaceutical companies are increasing their spending on advertisements. As Fottler, Ford, and Heaton point out in the book “Achieving Service Excellence: Strategies for Healthcare,” the pharmaceutical industry is very competitive, so in order

3. The marketing tactics in the case include payments, gifts and other financial lures to doctors and government officials, off-label uses of drugs, overpricing of the drugs resulting in the higher costs of Medicaid and Medicare programs and false advertisement. All of these marketing tactics have resulted from the desire to increase revenue and profits for the firm. Although the main focus of a business is to maximize profits, these marketing methods have resulted in harm to the society and have resulted in unethical behavior. The direct-to-consumer advertisements can be justified to an extent. Through this the industry educates the public about various drugs and their benefits, it could help educate the general population, and in a world

Agrifarm Company’s main objective is to determine the proper distribution, within a distribution network, to minimize the total shipping costs to deliver carloads from origin to the hubs and finally to the customers. To do so, we are given two distribution cost tables that explain the processing center shipping costs, meaning origin to hubs, and the customer shipping costs, meaning from hubs to the final customer. Therefore, the cost to ship rail cars of grain from the origins and hubs will determine the proper distribution of rail cars from origin to destination.

The company owns 25 plants for manufacturing with an output capacity of 20.000 pants per week. However, this production is not enough to satisfy the demand on the market. As a result of that, the company decided to employ independent manufacturers. Last year, these contractors produced one third of the total sales.

10 suppliers were responsible for 290 components in 3 fabricated metal parts, representing about $2 million annual spend

Our supplier, Beta Manufacturers has the second-most expensive cost. Because its fair labor standards are slightly questionable, additional costs may apply for Beta Manufacturers to abide to Wahl’s values. This may offset the saving from the most expensive supplier option. Due to the high cost of partnering with a reputable supplier, Wahl will be in a greater risk of a budget shortage which would restrict it to some less desirable alternatives in upcoming decisions. An expensive supplier has a high opportunity cost on the project, because it limits a significant portion of the budget that can be used to develop other aspects of the project, such as quality control, salary of employees, and distribution.

To begin the those who support direct to consumer advertising claim that this method educates consumers and allows them to take charge of their health. Their strongest argument for direct to consumer advertising is that “informing consumers will benefit the drive for health care reform” (Delbaere). Delbaere also suggests that consumers can benefit from theses ads by having access to different information sources about drugs and other treatment options rather than relying solely on health care providers. (more info/ research)

doctors to prescribe these drugs which may not even truly be necessary for a patient. Whenever a drug company develops a new product, pharmaceutical representatives meet with physicians to explain the benefits and risks of the drug and encourage prescribing it for the specific ailment. In regards to FDA guidelines, the relationship between physicians and pharmaceutical representatives has been closely examined (“Pharmaceutical Industry”). As an article in the April issue of the New England Journal of Medicine states about the concern of bribing doctors, “this promotion is an ongoing concern, because several studies have indicated that it has a significant effect on the physician prescribing behavior. Many pharmaceutical companies offer physicians

The objective of the problem is to develop a shipping schedule that minimizes the total cost of transportation. The objective function Z represents the cost. In this transportation model the decision variables, Xij, represent the quantity of waste transported from the i-th plant (where i=1,2,3,4,5,6) to the j-th waste disposal site (where j= A,B,C). The linear programming model for this problem can be written as follows. minimize

If you’re using an inbound marketing strategy to garner more leads, customers, and sales, offering some exclusive giveaways can really help. These giveaways often garner better word-of-mouth than other kinds of advertising and for a lot less money. However, to create a giveaway with the most effectiveness, you need to keep a few things in mind. Here’s how these steps break down and why you’ll want to use them in your campaign.

To minimize the cost of logistics and overall product’s cost by being more efficient while delivering the product at same quality.

Place: Loctite should expand their distribution network. Currently they only have about 71 general distributors (285*.25 from p. 4) and 43 specialty distributors (285*.15 from p. 4). One of Loctite’s main objectives is to expand their market share to 35% in the SIC industries (20-39). So they should partner with distributors that specialize in the SIC industries (20-39). They should first partner with distributors that specialize in industries with the largest instant adhesive usage. This means that Loctite should first find distributors in the metal products, machinery (33-35) and electrical (36) industries because they use the most instant adhesives. There are about 15,070 instant adhesive users in the (33-35) industry (102,523*.147 from Exhibit 1). Loctite will want to research what a good end-user company to distributor ratio is in that industry then use that to find how many distributors they want to partner with. I am going to assume Loctite should use one distributor for every 100 end-user companies and that Loctite wants to