Resolved Lawsuits against Pfizer Alleged Marketing Fraud

The current paper seeks to analyze Pfizer company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and identify its strategic goals.

Strategic goals

• Maintain old research and science projects with other companies and seek new collaboration opportunities;
• Seek further penetration in the markets with high growth potential, such as China and India.

Strengths

• The company has an impressive historical background. For instance, during World War II, Pfizer was the biggest and the most successful penicillin producer. Also, in 1997 and in 1998, Fortune magazine declared it as the most admired pharmaceutical company (Shook, 2007);
• As of March 31, 2021, Pfizer company is on the list of 50 top-world companies based on the market value, which equals 202 billion US dollars (Fortune, n.d.). Moreover, it is the fourth biggest pharmaceutical firm with revenue approximately equal to 42 billion US dollars;
• Pfizer collaborated with BioNTech company to create a vaccine against the virus that is the most popular one in the world (McCarthy, 2021);
• The company has offices and sells its products all over the world, which makes its brand highly recognizable. Moreover, after presenting the vaccine against COVID-19, there is hardly anyone who would not hear the brand’s name at least once.

Weaknesses

• Company’s debt. According to the Statista website, the company’s long-term debt in 2020 was equal to 37.1 billion US dollars (Mikulic, 2021);
• As any large pharmaceutical producer, Pfizer suffers from a huge amount of lawsuits from customers, competitive companies, and government representatives;
• The company has large administrative expenses due to bureaucratic organization;
• Due to frequent scandals that the company is involved in, its image worsens. For instance, just recently, the company faced accusations concerning bribery of doctors and illegal marketing of painkillers (Dunn, 2021).

Opportunities

• The company makes a number of agreements with other companies in order to increase its research potential;
• The recent approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine by WHO positively assures its spread to other countries (World Health Organization, 2020);
• New emerging markets such as China and India;
• Increasing demand for high-quality pharmaceutical products around the world.

Threats

• High competition from other pharmaceutical companies such as Merck & Co and Johnson & Johnson;
• The economic slowdown in the developed countries may lead to stagnation of the pharmaceutical market;
• The laws concerning environmental security have become increasingly strict, which affects the company’s expenses;
• The company frequently suffers from patent expiration which results in the loss of competitive advantage.

References

Dunn, A. (2021). Fact check: Resolved lawsuits against Pfizer alleged marketing fraud, data manipulation. USA TODAY.

Fortune. (n.d.). Fortune 500. 

McCarthy, N. (2021). Which COVID-19 vaccines are most widely used? Statista infographics.

Mikulic, M. (2021). Pfizer’s long-term debt from 2008 to 2020. Statista Infographics.

Rodengen, J.L. (1999). The legend of Pfizer. Write Stuff Enterprises.

Shook, R. L. (2007). Miracle medicines: Seven lifesaving drugs and the people who created them. Penguin.

Son, M. (2021). Drug patent expiry in 2021: Opportunities and challenges in the Korean market. ManagingIP.

World Health Organization. (2020). WHO issues its first emergency use validation for a COVID-19 vaccine and emphasizes need for equitable global access.