Longitudinal Strategy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Longitudinal Strategy - Essay Example These include vaccines, over-the-counter medicines as well as other broad range of health-consumer related products. The company therefore has a profile of operating in the different segments of pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare products within the UK as well as other parts of the world. Besides operating on medical supplies and research, GSK produces other health products such as beverages, which are used worldwide. Besides the operations of the company within the UK market, the company has major markets within the US, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain as well as in France (StockMarketsReview.com, 2013, para 1). GSK, as a trading company, has a statement of mission, which is provision and development of immunotherapeutic, as well as vaccines that are necessary for improvement of human health globally. The company has made strategic milestones in the field over years and is credited for having great and significant contributions towards the global health as it is today. The company’s profile reveals that the formation of the company as it is today has involved merger efforts by many companies and thus would have a history from the early years of 20th century. It has also made great development milestones in the past since the millennium, where the scope of this paper will be. This paper intends to evaluate the strategic development milestones that the company has undergone with a special attention to the last thirteen years (since 2000). This is because the existence of the corporate identity of GlaxoSmithKline plc is only that old from the merger of SmithKline Beecham and Glaxo Wellco me in December 1999 (Addison and Lawson 2012: 3-5). In line with the company’s strategic mission, it has special focus on some fundamental areas such as realizing sustainable growth, improving long-term financial performance as well as reducing risks. The company realizes these goals through embracing diversification in global business, delivering high-value products as well as adoption of simplified business models. The recent developments have seen the company adopt generic branded manufacturing to add to the previously existing patented strategies in order to command higher influence and relevance in the modern day market. Addison and Lawson through a recent discourse analysis study concerning the strategic development move of generic branding found out that this was necessary and very effective in lowering the associated performance risks as well as in increasing the range of products being traded on. Research studies show that the shift in production models into the inco rporation of generic manufacturing has greatly revolutionized the industry through lowering the costs of production and in the process lowering the prices of the commodities on offer. Through the move, the GSK is able to manufacture cheap pharmaceutical products through lowered costs in research as well as in awareness creation. The move was strategic in that it enabled the company to focus the competitive strategies in manufacture of the trading products at higher efficiencies in order to continue in the lead over the world market amidst heightened competition (Addison and Lawson 2012: 32). In fact, it is through such a move that the company is acknowledged to diversify