Competition, Marketing Mix and Pricing.

Competition, Marketing Mix and Pricing

HSA 305

Competition, Marketing Mix and Pricing.

Many Health Care organizations focus on products and services that are beneficial to the customers’ needs. This helps organizations to efficiently present unique products to the consumer, by offering services that are not available from other competitors. Organizations are constantly working to generate new ideas on how to improve and promote market growth through healthy alternatives to expand long-term care. This encourages beneficial competition between organizations through pricing and marketing mix. Market segmentations helps to deliver value to the consumer, while maximizing profits and improve quality of care.

Key Characteristics of Product Users.

Community Health Center in Apopka, FL

Community Health Center in Apopka, FL, is a local community center offering compact healthcare services in the areas of Family Medicine, Pediatric Care, Dental, Obstetrics and Gynecology Services, Wellness Visits, Optometry, Labs and Pharmaceuticals. The center is quite advanced with products and services that caters to the community’s socio-cultural health. To identify what the needs of the communities are, audience were segmented and categorized through key characteristics including environmental data which helped to determine patterns in general health upkeep, social activities, and physiognomies. Psychographic traits such as lifestyle choices, behavioral patterns (mental health concerns), medicinal needs, repetitive behaviors and developmental progress helps to determine market research and the analyzing of data for services best suited for the needs of the community. The intention is to target each service, it’s effectiveness and how informative it will be in monitoring client’s care, what services and products are offered, who are targeted audience, speed of response rate and information distribution (Healthcare Success, 2019). Community Health Center in Apopka, Florida, has a unified product brand based on marketing mix because of the variety of services they offer. This increases productivity, efficiency and creates vertical networking that invests in other physician practices. Through marketing mix, they offer multiple resources under one roof such as labs, imaging, dental and medicinal care, making the health center easily accessible to the needs of the community. This is also a push back against competitor pricing because many healthcare facilities within the same demographic area does not offer amalgamated healthcare. Additionally, Community Health Center in Apopka, has an extensive Nutrition Program with weekly classes that helps patient to understand what food consumption is about, how to prevent certain chronic diseases as diabetes, what are the causes of certain diseases, how they affects the body, glucose monitoring device education, dietary needs for better care and a healthy lifestyle, and so much more (American Association of Diabetes Educators, 2019).

Community health Center, Apopka, offers diversified health assessments including screenings, x-ray services and preventative care options that targets families and elderly care. Integration of services has greatly benefitted the community and the health center has created a marketing channel system to increase profits through bundled services including low co-payments and generic drugs at discounted prices (Community Health Centers, Apopka, 2019). Through different funding sources, the health center also provides quality care to clients seeking AIDS/ HIV care, medication to treat the disease and to slow it progress, funded through the Ryan White Foundation. The Health Center’s vicinity is strategically located to target the population with high HIV/AIDS diagnosis with the aim of offering hope of a normal lifestyle. The Ryan White Program – Part A to Part F, offers innovative and rapid care, trains staff in the delivery of care, serves the uninsured and under-insured, promotes successful health outcomes, provides support services of those affected by the disease, provides oral care and much more. (HRSA, Ryan White & Global HIV/AIDS Program, February 2019). The health center is also located near rehab facilities and that are temporary homes for those recovering from addictions and has the HIV virus or the AIDS disease, and near the local community center.

To expand the HIV/AIDS characteristic of the clinic, the Health Center has extended care to homebound patients by providing the services of a registered nurse whose weekly visits regulates their general upkeep and medical treatments. Only the local hospital within a ten-mile radius offers such comprehensive outpatient care. Patient experiences are also evaluated through surveys and social media leverage that provides valuable feedback about their experiences. Correspondingly, to increase influential competition, the organization has tactfully reduced wait times for appointments by providing an easy-to-use online scheduling system, that gives clients control of their planning and a patient portal to view medical records at their convenience.

Strategic Marketing Success

The Center’s major strategic marketing success is their ability to build and maintain trust between patients and doctors, evident through their long-term client database. The Health Center’s strength lies within their ability to show compassion, create meaningful experiences and have constant communication with patients. Strategic marketing also focuses on the patient’s wants and needs including ease of scheduling, easy access to their physician especially to answer important questions, great care and confidentiality, and ease of service. One of the meaningful ways the Center has marketed their healthcare products is through television advertisement to reach the broader multi-cultural environment; and because of their large tangible presence, other aspects of marketing includes maximizing various multi-media networks so they can connect with potential patients while learning about the different services they offer. Another category of marketing is through emails because it allows the health center to have leverage over targeted audience and increase in possible sales. According to LYFE Marketing, email marketing is more than converting subscribers, but it is also integrated messaging that delivers a consistency to gain strategic positioning (LYFE Marketing 2018).

Effective Marketing Mix

Of the four “P” s of marketing, Product, Price, Place and Promotion, the policy of a product is the general component of marketing mix, because it assesses service diversity, organizational structure, service requirements and analyze competitive activities of other healthcare institutions. Products comprises of what is being offered or sold to patients, the behavior of providers and why it is important. If products are grouped into clusters, they are expected to bring desired results that will meet the healthcare needs of each patient. Improved items such as a newly released HIV medicine that sustains longevity is tangible and product marketing will highlight the medicine’s advantages to increase patient’s interest and the organization’s reputation. Community Health Center, Apopka, does not only promote medicinal products but also promote their facility which offers high-end state of the art equipment that is able to meet the needs of the community. The quality of a product is also a dominant position because it does make a difference, and objectives are to keep both healthcare professionals and patients involved in the healthcare services. Product prices must also be comparable to keep its favorable position on the market through improvements, achieving higher standards and increase patient numbers through healthcare services provided (Kotler P, Keller KL. Marketing Management, 2008).

Pricing Strategies

Because pricing affects revenues significantly, strategies such as profits management, discounts, marketing segmentation and price skimming has impacted advertising volume, pricing methods such as expert financial expert feedback, cost plus approaches, customer surveys, and market analysis which are important factors to determine the best pricing strategies for the Center’s products (Kotler, P., Shalowitz, J., Stevens, R.J. 2008). To manage market production and keeping costs low for drugs, the health center must target cheaper retailers that produce the same drug but at a fraction of the cost. This will mean adjusting marketing strategies and market segmentation including advertising different versions of the same drug to attract various customer type. Even though pricing conditions differs, markup pricing is better because this adds a standard profit margin to manufacture costs by either using a certain percentage or a fixed amount. This helps the organization to adapt a selected price while considering factors such as marketing activities impact, pricing policies, what are the public’s perception, and the impression pricing will have on the consumer. Then, the final pricing for the drug will be selected based on the company’s positioning, brand quality, how they promote in comparison to their competitor, their relationship with the consumer and the degree of trust offering something unknown to the consumer. Because of the Health Center’s extensive database of client’s, pricing differentiation allows them to accommodate differences in customers locations, products and pricing (Kotler, P., Shalowitz, J., Stevens, R.J. 2008).

Drug pricing discrimination occurs when the Health Center sells services or products which are similar but different in costs, such as a generic drug versus a name brand drug. Different prices are charged to different categories of buyers, and this is called segmented pricing because of its pricing mix. Example, HIV/AIDS drugs are priced lower or perhaps free due to funding grants or through alliances with pharmaceutical companies. In conclusion, there are various aspects to healthcare pricing as different products require different pricing strategies in consideration. Pricing markets are segmented and even though there might be a reaction to pricing for healthcare drugs, the best response is flexibility and adaptation to these changes.

References

American Association of Diabetes Educators, 2019. https://www.diabeteseducator.org/home

Community Health Centers, Apopka, FL. 2019 https://www.chcfl.org/locations/apopka/Kotler, (HRSA, Ryan White & Global HIV/AIDS Program, February 2019). https://hab.hrsa.gov/about-ryan-white-hivaids-program/about-ryan-white-hivaids-program

Kotler P, Keller KL. Teora Publishing House. Bucharest, Romania: 2008. Marketing LYFE Marketing. https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/email-marketing-statistics/Healthcare Success https://www.healthcaresuccess.com/blog/branding/define-target-audience.html

Management P., Shalowitz, J., Stevens, R.J. 2008. Strategic Marketing for Health Care Organizations, “Building a Customer-Driven Health System.”

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