The emergence and change of Pharmacia Biotech 1959-1995 : the power of the slow flow and the drama of great events

Sammanfattning: This is the second volume of a dissertation dealing with industrial marketing change processes. The empirical part of the dissertation describes a set of marketing organization changes in Pharmacia Biotech. In 1959 Pharmacia AB launched a completely new separation product for biochemical separation and entered a period of steady growth and development in a completely new business area. By the second half of the 1980s, Pharmacia Biotech AB, subsidiary of the multinational pharmaceutical corporation Pharmacia, had become one of the world's major suppliers of biotech products and services. In 1986, following a sustained period of sharp sales increases and growth, Pharmacia Biotech acquired its main competitor LKB-Produkter AB. The merger process of the two companies triggered off a number of important marketing organization changes. One of these concerned the physical distribution and the stocks of biotech supplies. A centrally coordinated project was also started for restructuring the company's after sales service operations. These two projects overlapped with two other change processes with significant effects on Pharmacia Biotech's marketing organization. In one of the biggest business deals ever concluded in Sweden, the whole Pharmacia corporation was integrated into a large conglomerate, the Procordia Group. During the same period, the company entered a phase of internationalization in which the former country based net of marketing subsidiaries was rearranged and adapted to a new international situation. Regions and sub-regions were formed, and heavy emphasis was put on reorganizing the market organizations in Europe. These reorganization processes are the focus of a historical study of Pharmacia Biotech AB covering the period 1959-1995, including a prologue starting in the 1930s. The story is the empirical part of a study of industrial marketing change processes. It complements a separate analysis volume entitled "Concurrence, Transition and Evolution - Perspectives of Industrial Marketing Change Processes".