Analyze the Income Statements of Bayer

• the marketing and sales situation: including how the organization uses the 4Ps model and marketing mix(p169), how the buyer behavior influence this chosen company(p171);
• Identify the activities and underlying objectives involved in maintaining good quality
• business communication: including how this company handles cross-office communication and use informational techniques to manage its resources
• the company’s accounting situation: how can you understand the company’s financial situation.

• Explain the concepts of marketing
• Explain the 4P’s model and the extended marketing mix
• Understand organizational buying behavior and consumer behavior
• Understand feature/benefit of sales technique

Bayer A.G.’s 4ps model and marketing mix

Bayer A.G. uses the 4p’s model to be its marketing strategy.

Product: Bayer offers a wide range of products to its customers. There are major brands which forms the part of Bayer’s product portfolio. These products help us to find to the solutions that poses a great challenge to us. It is mainly divided into four categories. Pharmaceutical category includes products that are prescribed for women healthcare and cardiology, oncology and haematology. Their top selling products include Kogenate, Betaseron, Trasylol and Cipro. Another category for Bayer products is consumer health products. These consist of mainly products that are non-prescribed under the category dermatology, allergy, cough & cold, foot care and sun care. Apart from these two, third category includes crop science that focuses on seed that are highly valued, best pest management solutions and customer care service for agricultural methods. Animal health category includes products for farm animal and companion animals.

Price: Pricing plays an important role in pharmaceutical industry. Bayer has always focused on quality products. To maintain that quality, price becomes important factor. It has always followed a competitive based pricing. For most of its products, the prices are similar to the prices of its competitor’s products. But, the differentiating factor is the quality that they never compromised. They have their own sites for procurement. Thus, it reduces costs, smoothens delivery system as well as they can follow security and environmental securities as per the set global standards.

Place: Procurement management is very important for Bayer. This ensures that goods and services are available in right time at right place. This helps the smooth flow of materials in the distribution channels. They are very peculiar when it comes to choose suppliers for their products. They have defined their own code of conduct named Bayer’s supply code of conduct for suppliers. Environmental, social and governance standards decide whether to continue with existing suppliers or not. Now, these suppliers transfer the products to various certified retailers and finally through retailers, these products reach to customers. We can say they follow a basic distribution channel of system to reach to its customer base.

Promotion: The Company founded its own sporting club named Bayer 04 Leverkusen. It is pretty famous for being a football club, but it has also participated in various other sports such as volleyball, boxing, basketball and athletics. In Germany, it is one of the largest sports club. The company also sponsors other clubs such as Dormagen, Wuppertal and many others. The company has presence in various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, pin interest and Xing. They have also introduced E-cards that can be sent to your near and dear once free of cost through Bayer’s world.

Buyer behavior:

Consumer behavior is extremely important to businesses because consumers are the lifeblood of any business. It wants to know who buys a product, why they buy it, how often they would buy it and how they use it. Since online shopping getting more and more popular in China and more people are preferring to online shopping, Bayer set up a Digital Management Committee in 2014 to help it adjust the business in digital area and making strategies. One successful case is the Coppertone, a brand of Bayer’s in Sun Care. Bayer made it get popular in China by depending on the E-commerce platform. As a result, Coppertone had a great sale during these years. Another example is the aspirin. People buy it for different reasons, some to kill the pain, some to treat fevers and some to prevent heart disease. Marketing staff can introduce the product with different priorities.