MHA626 Strategic Planning & Marketing in Health Care Discussions

Overview

Week1

When discussing strategic marketing for healthcare organizations, it is important to examine the purpose of marketing in evaluating and formulating an effective marketing plan. Two distinct purposes have been proposed, including

• the transactional view and
• the customer relationship-building and loyalty view.

Kotler et al. (2021) suggest that “some marketers question the use of terms consumer and patient. The traditional view of a consumer or patient is that of someone who is passively consuming something, but today’s consumers are also producers. With respect to healthcare products and services, they are actively sending messages about their experiences, creating new uses, providing new findings from the web and other resources to their physicians, and lobbying for more and better benefits” (p. 4).

Most importantly, healthcare organizations that develop a marketing culture toward their demographic or specific patient needs will achieve better financial performance than organizations that limit themselves to selling a product or service alone. Given this outcome, healthcare marketing and strategic planning discussions should be ongoing.

In your initial post, address the following components:

• Discuss how emerging trends in healthcare can affect the marketing plan and how this can affect a healthcare organization’s strategic and business plans.
• Describe how marketing is organized in the healthcare delivery system.
• Examine how a strategic marketing plan adds value to a healthcare organization.
• Analyze the five key criteria of market segments that must be rated favorably to be useful within a strategic marketing plan.
  • The key criteria are
    • measurable
    • sustainable
    • accessible
    • differentiable
    • actionable

Guided Response: Your initial post should be a minimum of 500 words.

Week 2

Problem identification is always the best place to start healthcare marketing research. Organizations need accurate and timely marketing information to understand the contemporary needs of their target market. It is important for healthcare organizations to not only understand the needs of their patients but also their needs and expectations.

Marketing managers need a consistent and accurate flow of data to predict consumer

• trends,
• needs,
• preferences, and
• patterns.

Additionally, it is important for marketing managers to understand internal the healthcare organizations’ financial data, like

• volume,
• revenue,
• margins, and
• the cost of goods and services.

In your initial post, address the following components:

• Discuss why it is important to understand the healthcare market environment.
• Describe what constitutes accurate and applicable marketing research.
• Analyze the six steps found in the primary market research process.

Guided Response: Your initial post should be a minimum of 500 words.

Week 3

Kotler et al. (2021) suggest that the “three environmental forces affecting consumers are natural, economic and political-legal. The corresponding trends are the increased prevalence of chronic disease (natural), consumers paying more for healthcare (economic), and the growth of consumer healthcare accountability (political-legal). Market driven healthcare organizations are analyzing these trends to leverage market opportunity and avoid market threats” (p. 131).

In your initial post, address the following components:

• Discuss the three healthcare environmental trends affecting consumers and healthcare organizations’ strategic plans.
  • The healthcare environmental trends are
    • natural force
    • economic force
    • social-cultural force
• Define how market-driven healthcare organizations use innovative strategies to leverage market opportunities.
• Explain the factors consumers use to make healthcare buying decisions.

Guided Response: Your initial post should be a minimum of 500 words.

Week 4

Kotler et al. (2021) suggest that “strategic marketing increases value for physicians, their patients-customers, referral sources, and practice employees. Along with this, strategic marketing leads to improved practice financial performance, reduced risk, and higher market share. Additionally, strategic healthcare marketing can assist hospitals in increasing value and brand equity through better alignment with market needs” (p. 176).

It is also important to note that the driving force behind the hospital marketing evolution is the result of economic and environmental forces.

In your initial post, address the following components:

• Define healthcare environmental change forces affecting physicians.
  • Three main healthcare environmental change forces are
    • demographic forces
    • economic forces
    • social-cultural forces
• Explain how strategic marketing can solve a wide range of physician practice problems.
• Describe healthcare environmental forces affecting hospitals.
  • Three healthcare environmental forces are
    • economic forces
    • social-cultural forces
    • technological forces

Guided Response: Your initial post should be a minimum of 500 words.

Week 5

Kotler et al. (2021) suggest that “understanding the health technology market definition, size, and product segmentation is important for developing effective marketing strategies. The World Health Organization defines health technology as the application of organized knowledge and skills in the form of devices, medicines, vaccines, procedures, and systems to solve health problems and improve quality of lives.” (p. 234).

In your initial post, address the following components:

• Discuss increasing consumer demand for health information technology and data security as a growing market threat.
• Explain how strategic marketing can help health technology companies respond to challenges and threats.
• Describe how healthcare marketers can ethically and legally gather and use information to build relationships with healthcare consumers.

Guided Response: Your initial post should be a minimum of 500 words.

Week 6

Kotler et al. (2021) suggest that “social marketing is the design, implementation, and control of programs calculated to influence the accessibility of social ideas and involving considerations of product planning, pricing, communication, distribution, and marketing research” (p. 339).

In your initial post, address the following components:

• Define social cause marketing and the use of marketing tools to influence the acceptability of social ideas.
• Describe three of the ten steps involved in the development of a social marketing campaign.
• Discuss the three main public health issues attracting social marketing efforts.
  • Three main public health issues are
    • maternity
    • disease prevention
    • healthy living choices
  • How do these issues affect a healthcare organization’s strategic and marketing plan?

Guided Response: Your initial post should be a minimum of 500 words.