Assignemnt: Strategic Planning & Marketing in Health Care

Discussion 1

Marketing Opportunities and Strategies

For this discussion, you will obtain information for the Marketing Mix section of your Final Project. Specifically, you will focus on your chosen HCO's marketing opportunities and goals. In addition, examine your healthcare organization's SWOT analysis and the environmental analysis you conducted.

Successful businesses rely on analytical data as a means to make informed decisions. Opportunity analysis provides data to marketing teams that help to define possible opportunities and encompasses multiple aspects of a given alternative prior to making final decisions. Market opportunity analysis takes into consideration the opportunities available based on the environment in which the organization currently exists such as SWOT analysis, internal and external environmental analyses, and financial conditions.

Example: Happy Valley long-term care center conducts yearly competitive analyses. Marketing teams make phone calls to competitors as a means to gather data in the areas of pricing and amenities offered. Other areas of concern include potential competitors and political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental issues.

For your initial post, access the Opportunity Assessment Worksheet and input your data regarding external and internal considerations based on your healthcare organization's SWOT analysis (Week Two Assignment) and the environmental analysis you conducted (initial discussion from Week Three). You will attach the completed worksheet to your initial post for your peers to view. In the body of your post

Explain why you would implement the opportunity assessment process before decisions are enacted to pursue specific marketing objectives.

State any new opportunities that emerged based on the opportunity analysis you performed.

Discuss any unforeseen issues that might be missed when using opportunity assessment processes such as rapidly changing technologies and short product life cycles.

Discussion 2

Market Segmentation and the Identification of Target Markets

This discussion will allow you to obtain additional information for the Marketing Mix section of your Final Project. Specifically, you will generate content that will support the marketing segmentation and target market elements of the Marketing Mix section of your project.

Current healthcare organizations are providing a greater degree of services to their patients based on consumer demand. Many organizations have broken or segmented their products/or services into manageable units, which requires marketing departments to implement very specific marketing mixes that are tailored to defined target markets.

Consider your chosen healthcare organization. Based on the marketing objectives you identified in your Week Three Assignment, use the table below (also found in Chapter 9 of the course text) as a guide to determine at least one possible target market for your marketing plan.

Discuss why you chose that market segment and how you chose the target marketing.

Table 9.5
The Two-Phase Strategy of Market Segmentation and Target Marketing
Phase One: Market Segmentation
Phase Two: Target Marketing
1. Identify bases for segmenting the market.
1. Select the target markets.
2. Develop profiles of resulting segments.
2. Develop positioning for each target market.
3. Develop measures of segment.
3. Develop marketing mix attractiveness for each target market.

Adapted from Strategic Planning and Marketing in Healthcare Organizations by R. Stevens and L. S. Silver, 2015, section 9.4: "Market Segmentation and Target Marketing." Copyright 2015 by Bridgepoint Education, Inc.