Identifying the Future Plans of Pharmaceutical Companies Accepted in the Tehran Stock Exchange: a Qualitative Content Analysis Approach

In this research, a collection of Iranian pharmaceutical companies which have been accepted in the Tehran stock market has been selected based on purposive sampling. The future plans of 34 out of 44 companies, whose annual reports of the board of directors ending in 1400 could be accessed from codal.ir, were analyzed and classified by content analysis. As a result of the analysis of future plans, a total of 3 main themes (market and marketing, supply chain and profitability), 18 sub-themes and 65 codes were identified. Among the main themes, the theme of market and marketing, the theme of supply chain and the theme of finance have a frequency of %72, %22 and %6, respectively. Among the sub-themes, product portfolio diversification, profitability, and export market development are the most frequent among the companies' plans. Based on this research, it was found that pharmaceutical companies pay special attention to actions related to the market and marketing by doing activities such as increasing market share, product portfolio diversification, integrated marketing communications and optimal sales system management.