Table of Contents
Products Strategy
Central park Clinic focuses on healthcare management of patients with chronic infections, emotional management, research and wellbeing of families. Below are some of products clusters that have been set by the organization:
Chronic diagnosis services: The central Park clinic provides a wide range of clinical services targeting patients with chronic complications. The organization is well equipped with doctors and equipments to aid diagnosis and care of the chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart infection and cancer among others.
Pediatric Psychology: The central park clinic is also well equipped with trained personnel’s to handle issues surrounding children including diseases affecting them.
Medical research services: The organization has established a state of the art research centre that is used to serve both medical students as well as other institutions outside the hospital boundaries including the government.
The classification of product/service
Our products are classified as direct services because they are delivered directly to the consumer in this case, patients. Central park clinic is offering unique products characterized by high level of competitiveness. Though most of our products are unique and difficult to define, the institution does its best in terms of hiring qualified medical staffs and good managers so as to enhance the hospital integrity.
The product life cycle
Our products are mainly classified in the line of service delivery. As such, there is no product lifecycle, but the management has put in place considerations concerning personnel’s including doctors and other staff that are all required to work in unity so as to deliver quality to customers.
Price Strategy
Setting up the prices of products and services of a business is a crucial activity since it determines the actual revenue of the business. The central park clinic has resorted to set its price through the aid of optional product pricing technique. The strategy was chosen because it would enable customers to seek for services depending of level of needs of which is not optional. According to Ross (2017), hospital is a service oriented business and customers will not settle for anything other than the best quality. It is under this premise that the Central Park Clinics have resorted to integrate the issue of quality as part of the pricing strategy. In this regard, customers can decided to chose a Medicare which is discounted and compensated by the national universal healthcare or Medicaid which is offered by private insurance bodies. Regardless of the two price packages, the services are offered at an affordable price. While some prices especially those medicinal products and equipments are dictated by suppliers, the final price will be moderated in terms of quality as more consumers are willing to pay a price of 30% more on top of the actual processing and distribution cost. However, promotion has been greatly used to buy the excitement from customers and to help in dominating the market.
Pricing Objectives
Our organization presently charges average market prices which are considerably lower than competitors’ prices. In essence, the institution charges an average of $70 for mothers seeking for caesarean. In that regard, the organization is not thinking to charge any exorbitant prices unless during the case of inflation
The following are some of the pricing objectives of Central Park Clinics
- Charge low e prices with an intention of increasing the customer margins
- Establish a reduced package price for the elderly and youths since they form majority of the population.
- Forecast on quality as part of the pricing strategy.
The Price Elasticity of the Products/Service
Pricing remains an important element in the hospital sector since it influences the overall performance of the institution. At Central Park Clinic, actual revenue is treated more sensitive to the level of pricing (Vogel, 2014). As such, any slightest reduction in the price of products and services is intended to double the aggregate volume of customers and increases the amount of revenue in the long run. Operating profit margin of the institution is set in accordance to the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA), USA. Pricing, that is neither too low nor too high. Such a strategy has been implemented to ensure fair competitiveness in the field of healthcare. Nonetheless, the company also factors issues of insurance in pricing with less than 50% to be paid directly from individual pockets.
The organization has put in place adequate measures to furnish patients with the required estimates before proceeding to offer medication (Leary & Baumeister, 2017). While this is exceptional to issues of emergency care, the hospital finds it important to focus on effective and affordable pricing that is in cognizant to the needs of customer’s thereby effective and affordable pricing. The rational for using this method is to allow customers to effectively plan on how to pay their share.
Secondly, the organization also uses logical pricing model. With the help of this model, the company uses a healthcare model to track the projected benefits establishing a price tag on every service. Through the utilization of the system, the institution is able to substantiate the relationship between charges and the cost of providing services alongside markups (Gaynor & Town, 2015). However, review payments are being conducted from time to time to determine the competitiveness of a pricing decision.
Finally, Central Park clinic utilizes a proactive process to maintain the margin. The institution through its leaders have has embraced proactive pricing review ton isolate and resolve possible chances of risk revenues or challenges associated with margins. Lots of focus is channeled on key lines with an intention to leverage trained personnel’s to identify margin and compliance risks by payer and by service line.
Constraints on the Pricing Policy
The following are some of the challenges that have since been felt by the adoption of the above pricing strategies.
- They are open to absolute total charge increase
- It has been difficult to operate on the corridors for individual item codes/services
- Sometimes our prices have been affected by competitive price limits.
Distribution (Place) strategy
Businesses dealing in financial services such as banking, and healthcare are often characterized with a sophisticated distribution system. According to Alexander and Wang (2014), administrators of such organizations are expected to deliver services in contrast to physical goods that are distributed in between the middle men. In that regard, services are delivered up demand and there is limited placement of inventories. In most cases, services are often not delivered from one place to the other. However, service providers may be expected to move from one location to the other to deliver services to customers. Interestingly, healthcare most healthcare services may be delivered to areas within the reach of customers. It is under this category that Central Park Clinic falls (Alexander & Wang, 2014). The organization has put in place adequate measures to foresee the distribution of its services in most parts of the United states by establishing outlets in cities such as Texas and California where there high demand for quality healthcare services. As part of promoting its distribution channels, the Central Pak Clinics uses a single channel so as to eliminate possible chances of intermediaries who are known to increase the cost of the end product. The Central Park clinics operate on a single distribution channel characterized with three distribution decisions: physical access, time access, and informational and promotional access.
Physical Access: The organization has factored physical access in the distribution of its products and services. To attain this objective, the organization constructs its clinics in areas that are within the reach of customers. The rationale is to increase the volume of customers in attendance. Therefore, the organization operates in locations such as shopping malls that are convenient to customers. Besides, it
Time Access: The organization also considers factoring in place time access so as to enhance the availability of products and services to its customers. Most of the organizational outlets operate on 24 hour basis customers can seek for healthcare services at any time of the day. This level of distribution is most appropriate because it gives opportunity to customers who have access to the services depending on the time of need considering that healthcare need may come at any time of the day.
Information and promotional access: This concept of the single distribution channel was introduced by the organization to enhance dissemination of information to customers. Healthcare business is a very sensitive environment that requires accurate and timely dissemination of information. The rationale embracing this strategy was to reduce the length of waiting time in the service providing waiting area right from calling time to appointment time. With the reduction of vertical marketing systems, the organizations rely on huge traffic zones to promote its services rather than using physical recommendations to generate demand. This concept was chosen because it is best applicable to provision of healthcare services.
Promotion Strategy
A company producing quality products and services would still require implementing an extra effort to attract attention of customers through promotion (Storey, 2016). A reliable promotional technique would definitely enable customer to understand the presence of a company products and services. Some of the common promotional strategies used by businesses today include advertising, personal selling, publicity and sales promotion among others. Therefore, a hospital business that mainly deals in services delivery must implement the right tools so as to reach to the audience. The marketing department of Central Part Clinic has implemented a strongest tool characterized by Public relations. As such, the organization is considered as an imperative differentiator and reputable in its marketing zones. Below are some of the promotional strategies used by the organization.
Advertising
The organization uses direct marketing involving email and telemarketing to disseminate the right information to customers. The advertising contents of Central park clinics are often designed attractively for optimal results. According to Nagle & Müller (2017), direct mailing must be channeled appropriately so that it does not annoy the recipients. The company is also making good use of its website and social media sites to convey information about the organizational products and services. Both the organization website and social media sites are regularly updated to keep the general public updated about the organizational undertakings in terms of products and services. The company also uses brochures to communicate to customers. As it has always been the tradition, print Medias such as pamphlets, brochures and articles communicates best to customers in the waiting bay. Slightly different from the standard black and white prints, Central Park clinics contracts an external agency who designs for it attractive brochures containing images and texts about the organizational activities. Besides, the contracted institution also prints information concerning infections, control measures and medication. This helps many patients in understanding some of the basic procedures towards improving their healthcare.
Personal Selling
A faster growth of a business can be always be enhanced by a strong sales force (Ingram et al., 2015). To ensure effective personal selling, Central Park clinic employs staffs e with good interpersonal and communication skills. The sales of the organization as well as expatriates are trained to have a good understanding of the organizational products and services. Besides, they have improved verbal and nonverbal communication that is needed to build customer relationships.
The company also has a rapport to loyal customers. Central Park has developed agreement with a network of partners to speak good about the business. With the help of personal selling, the company has been able to attract new while marinating loyal customers who have found it necessary to stay with the company products and services.
Publicity
Engaging in appositive publicity has proven to effective mass promotional tools. Public relations comprise of many activities intended to build good rapport with the company. The main idea behind publicity is to raise awareness of the Central Park products and services. The concept of publicity has greatly impacted in building the brand image of the company. At Central Park clinic, staffs are trained to uphold the brand image by speaking subjectively about quality services offered by the clinic.
As pointed out by Ginter, Duncan & Swayne (2016)., the organization continues to focus on improving care relations of people residing in the US as well as patients coming in to seek for more improved care. It is under this premise that the company has resorted to promote its brand trough the delivery of quality services. For instance, the organization trust in the recent years have been built through the development of cancer and cardiac services as well as hyper-acute stroke and trauma services that have contributed to its utmost publicity.
Sales promotion
Hospital marketing in the current world has gained recognition as a management tool that promotes the future of the business. Orchestrated by competitive volatile world, Healthcare institutions have involved in sales promotion to spell out uncertainties. At Central Park clinic, there is involvement of hard-core advertising in accordance to the regulations set by the medical council of the United States. The institution wanting to deliver on its agenda have seen the organizational engagement in direct sales promotion s and road shows aimed at sensitizing potential customers about the availability of products and services. Of critical to note is that the clinics engagement in direct sales has been governed by ethics and in many cases, promotions are done once after every 4 months or maybe when launching a new service.
Details about the advertising campaign
Methods of advertising medical products and services have been constituently changing, but the most interesting development are experienced in the service sector have been felt in the latest years (Dickson, 2015). The idea of direct consumer campaign has made it quite easier for healthcare institutions to reach a huge population of customers within the shortest time. On the contrary to most organizations that rely on products campaign to promote their services, the Central Park Clinic has adopted institutional campaign to popularize its services. Almost all Americans are currently connected to the internet (Dickson, 2015). As such, the organization has used this opportunity to advertise its institution through the internet platform. Most of the organizational campaigns are conducted through the official company websites and social media sites such as face book and tweeter. However, the company occasionally showcases its institutional services through television and radios so as to reach the elderly and the rest of the society who cannot operate technologiocal gadgets (Dickson, 2015). Nonetheless, websites form the main advertising platform for institutions. Since patients might not personally chose to but the products and services for Central park clinics, their relatives or family members are expected to use search engine and internet to seek for products that are best for the patient. However, the marketing department of the institution is still optimistic that a good number of patients would still be in a position to access internet information to enhance their benefit to the organizational product. It is under this premise that the websites have been chosen as more appropriate to market the organization.
The Target Audience
The target audience for Central Park Clinic advertising campaign youths, mid income earners and families who have access to the internet. Youths and middle aged persons have been form the main target because of their behavioral nature to access the internet more frequently. It also forms the basis for networking that is needed to determinate information easely to a wider pool of audience. However, families have been targeted because it forms an intermediary niche of availing information to the elderly and sick persons who cannot get aces to other forms of the media.
Electronic media has been chosen that is face book and tweeter have been chosen to support marketing campaigns for the organization. The rationale behind choosing this type of media is because of its nature to personalize attention that is needed by the audience. Besides, it also creates rooms for the respondents to seek for referrals. To attract more attention of customers, our marketing department has put in place sufficient measures to design scheduled informational, educational, and inspirational posts some of which are animated to attract the attention.
The organizational advertising objectives
- To increase public awareness of the availability of central park products and services
- To promote the idea that the institution offers the best quality products and a remorseful hospital environment.
Since websites and online media platform requires a little amount of budget to put in place, the organization has allocated an annual budget of the $500 for website hosting and maintenance. However, an additional $250 has also been set aside to handle issue of emergencies that may maybe associate with the maintenance.
We can do it today.
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