Abbott Laboratories is the health care American company, based in Illinois, United States. It was established by Wallace Calvin Abbott who was a physician in Chicago in 1888, for the purpose of formulating drugs. Gradually, the business grew and started to sell the research-based medicines and drugs, nutritional and diagnostic products, and also medical devices. In 20133, it split off research-based pharmaceuticals in AbbVie, and was able to earn the revenue of about $27.39 billion. Abbott is successful in offering the wide range of medical devices, generic and branded pharmaceuticals, nutritional and diagnostic products too. The in-vitro diagnostic segment performs the blood screening and immunoassays. Its diagnostic instrument and medical test systems are broadly used by laboratories, hospitals, physician offices and blood banks for monitoring and diagnosing the diseases like hepatitis, HIV, heart failure, metabolic disorders, and cancer (Abbott, 2018). The company is internationally recognized and still expanding. It needs different matrices and evaluation tool to understand where it is lacking. For this, BCG matrix can help the company by identifying the strategic position so that investment decisions could be perform well. The BCG matrix analysis of Abbott laboratories is as follows;
Cash Cows
This quadrant has the high share of market and low growth rate of market, which reflects to the idea of high cash outflow rather than cash inflow. This quadrant does not need heavy investment because of low growth, but the revenues are high because of large volume of sales. Cash cow needs to be maintained and retained its positions, so that it will be beneficial for the company. Somogel and Burnol are the cash cow items of Abbott laboratories. The products are recognized worldwide and are able to generate high amount of revenues (Zeerak, 2016).
Stars
The products in this category have the high growth level and market share simultaneously, which means it has the high revenue but less than cash cow. The growth level is high which means it also consumes more investment for further growth and development in the company or market. The items in this catwalk needs to be invested more so that it could be turn into cash cow. For Abbott, Brufen, Surbex Z, and Ensure are the star items. It helps the company in making revenue and need investment to grow (Ajeet, 2013).
Question Marks
The quadrant is also known as problem child. This means the products have high growth rate but low market share. This reflects to the idea that it has the potential to grow further in the market but it needs heavy investment to increase the sale volumes. It is necessary for the company to invest heavily so that the products can be turn into star or cash cow, or else it will turn into dog and become the burden for the company. Mospel, and Similac Mom are the question mark items for Abbott, as it is investing more in the category to make it star products (Zeerak, 2016).
Dogs
This is the burden for the company, low growth rate and low market share. This means that the company is on breakeven point, neither loss nor profit. But mainly loss has to be bore by the company, if the loss is more, the company should shut down the operations of the products, and that money could be invested somewhere else. This needs heavy investment so that it could turn into star or question mark. Dijex, and Froben are the dog items for Abbott (Ajeet, 2013).
References
Abbott. About us. [Online], Available at: http://www.abbott.com/, [Accessed on: 7th October, 2018].
Ajeet, 2013. Abbott Laboratoriees. [Online], Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/ajeet131988/abbott-pharma-ppt, [Accessed on: 7th October, 2018].
Zeerak, S. 2016. Abbott Laboratories. [Online], Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/SyedaZeerak/abbott-laboratories-68143503, [Accessed on: 7th October, 2018].