«Communicate in a foreign market»
by Lisa ChistoniThe text is about business communication in a foreign market. The chosen companies are Spanish but “Italian mother-companies’ daughters”, none of them quoted on the Stock Exchange neither in the Spanish market nor in the Italian one. Even if since their birth they have been growing a lot and the products variety has been expanded too, they remain familiar enterprises in the corporate governance. They were born in Italy between last ‘800 and the first part of ‘900: Menarini in 1886, Zambon in 1906 and Alfa Wassermann in 1948.
It has been interesting analyse the communication changes the companies show when relating with the external environment, for example on the basis of the channels or of the type of stakeholder – they declared to almost totally address to doctors and, in the case of Zambon, the family ones -.
The research - carried out through in-deep interviews – tried to investigate the relation between the companies, on one hand, and the public, the owners and the mass media, on the other hand.
Unquestionable starting point: the business plan concept, both on the base of Italian references and on the base of a Catalan agency specialized in foreign investments – I am referring to the area of Barcelona -. The enterprises are jealous of their business plan and it is difficult that they can let information linked with it out. Also the pharmaceutical business I studied showed the fear that even an old business plan could give important clues to the competitors. Generous with details and material, they have been demonstrated very strict with the business plan “issue”. However, if it has not been possible to gain access to the business plan, I could know many information that constitute the hub of the business work and, through the information given me from the employees, the enterprise data in Internet and the theory based on read studies, we can try to rebuild an hypothetical business plan of the pharmaceutical industry.
Then I inserted the results of a joined study that listened to the foreign companies – present in Catalogna – opinions, generally satisfied of the geografic choice. Among the greater investments sectors, the pharmaceutical is in the sixth place.
For this industry, the only one supervisors are the Department of Health and the Spanish Society of Medicines, apart from the Autonomous Community Health Authorities. The autocontrol is a peculiar element, through the main category association: FARMAINDUSTRIA. Because the business feel much regulated and controlled, I wanted to dedicate a large part to the Regulatory
Affair, using the more updated texts: the Pharmaceutical Industry Ordination,
the Guide for the Publicity for the Human Use Medicines, the Spanish Code for the Medicines Promotion and the Interrelation of the Pharmaceutical Industry with the Health Professionals.
Finally, I analysed the 3 pharmaceutical companies about: • Historic path
• Stakeholders • Relation with Italy • Web page organization
• Difference information/promotion • Interviewed business functions
• Internal and external communication • Social responsibility
