Changing Business Environment and Strategic Transitions in the Pharmaceutical Wholesale Industry in Japan

Empirical Applications of the Kyushu Wholesale Sector

Abstract

At present the Japanese pharmaceutical wholesale industry is facing significant changes in the structure of their systems and environment externally while simultaneously facing increasing competitiveness and reorganization with in the industry; moreover, the internal pressures generated by these external factors serve to increase strategic risks.
We have analyzed the strategies and activities of firms in the industry by establishing analytical parameters surrounding the wholesale companies. These analysis should be valuable for wholesale companies who position themselves in the middle of change and who are seeking to determine which kind of strategy is desirable to add value to their services. Moreover, we have analyzed how to understand the competition within the wholesale industry from a systematic perspective. Our analysis revealed that there exists strong desire to integrate two perspectives: the micro perspective of the firm in the industry and the macro perspective of the industry itself, but they do nonetheless continue to be distinctively separate.
We have also organized the rudiments of the market strategy in the wholesale industry based on previous analysis. However, many of these analysis were based on the“old rules”, which must be altered to incorporate the new rules. It is important to realize for the wholesale companies that this analysis emphasized the risk of maintaining the traditional hypothesis in the industry when facing the transition of the strategic stances of vendor, etc.
With respect to reorganization in the industry and price competition, the Kyushu region are quite well known in handling these issues quite handsomely. We have atudied the conditions for success for reorganization in the Kyushu region and have analyzed its applicability to the future. Although it is difficult to directly apply the results of the Kyushu region to other areas, we believe that this case example reveals much interesting and worthy data.