GranuLab: positioning GranuMaS in the bone graft substitute industry
Title – GranuLab: positioning GranuMaS in the bone graft substitute industry. Subject area – Developing and communicating a positioning strategy covering issues on market positioning, product lifecycle, product differentiation strategies and developing the marketing mix strategies in order to compete with competitors. Study level/applicability – Advanced undergraduate and MBA student, taking courses of marketing management, strategic marketing, and brand management. Case overview – GranuLab is a private limited company based in Shah Alam, about 30 km from Malaysia ' s capital city of Kuala Lumpur; it was a producer of synthetic bone graft substitute GranuMaS. GranuMaS was launched in the Malaysian market in late 2010. At that time, the company aimed to capture 50-70 percent of the Malaysian bone graft substitute market by the end of 2015. However, by the end of 2012, GranuLab was experiencing low sales and the company had suffered a two-year loss due to manufacturing at low capacity. GranuLab also faced stiff competition from multinational competitors that had penetrated the Malaysian market earlier with competitive product offerings. The pressure to increase the sale of GranuMaS was mounting for Mr Romli Ishak, the Managing Director of GranuLab, Mr Fadil Dalal, the new General Manager of Marketing, and GranuLab ' s management team. This is especially so since the company ' s contract to supply GranuMaS to government hospitals under the Ministry of Health (MOH) program would end soon. These situations forced the company to make a quick decision. In December 2012, Mr Romli and his team pondered upon the best strategy that the company should pursue to achieve its objective of being a dominant player in the Malaysian bone graft substitute industry. This teaching case is designed to stimulate case analysts ' thinking on positioning a medical device product in a market which was already conquered by established multinational companies. Expected learning outcomes – Understanding of the concept of product positioning, product lifecycle, marketing mix strategies, and social exchange theory, enables case analysts to extend the concepts to analyzing many other products and services in organizational settings. Supplementary materials – Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email [email protected] to request teaching notes.