Year: 2016-17

Company: Thermo Fisher Scientific

Liaison(s): Jeff Croissant, Melissa Stolow

Thermo Fisher Scientific is the world leader in serving science, through its brands’ Thermo Scientific, Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, Fisher Scientific and Unity Lab Services. With a product portfolio that offers solutions in the laboratory, life science, clinical diagnostics and industrial segments, Thermo Fisher Scientific, with yearly revenues of over $17 billion, has established its presence in more than 50 countries. Invitrogen, prior to its acquisition, found initial success with its kits for molecular cloning. Invitrogen thereafter acquired several companies, namely, NOVEX, Molecular Probes, BioSource, Zymed, and Caltag Laboratories, that broadened its customer base and strengthened its product portfolio. In 2008, a merger between Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems created Life Technologies. The Invitrogen brand today encompasses a range of molecular biology tools that vary from isolated reagents to fully optimized kits and instruments. It is within this Invitrogen Brand that Thermo Fisher Scientific offers its antibody portfolio. Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Invitrogen antibody portfolio spans of over 48,000 antibodies that target over 70% of the human proteome. They are currently committed towards being one of the leading providers of antibodies in the life sciences market. However, they lack the top of the mind awareness amongst their customers in this competitive yet fragmented antibody market. Their current efforts towards increasing customer awareness is through their marketing campaign surrounding the importance of finding the perfect match for their antibodies. Their ultimate goal is to elevate this awareness to 50% amongst their customers and increase their market share in this segment. The Thermo Fisher Team Master’s Project team was tasked with engaging and studying the consumers who utilize antibodies and explore the patterns that influence their purchasing behaviors, sales cycles and loyalty influences, within different research domains. Additionally, Thermo Fisher Scientific is interested in exploring different approaches to market their specificity validation method for antibodies. The team has utilized primary market research tools to gain both empirical and qualitative insights on the consumer market encompassing research, academia and industry and propose marketing recommendations to Thermo Fisher Scientific.