Background for Assignment:

Marketing a health care product or service is a complex undertaking that must be approached strategically. When developing marketing plans, organizations need to not only consider their strategic plans, but also the strengths, weaknesses, and threats resulting from environmental forces that may impact their marketing campaigns. Effective health care leaders use these strengths, weaknesses, and threats to maximize opportunities and, ultimately, increase their market share.

This week, as you begin applying marketing theories, principles, and concepts to health care, you examine environmental forces and trends. You also explore the impact of these forces and trends on health care marketing.

Learning Objectives

Students will:
- Analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of environmental forces/trends to health care organizations
- Analyze the impact of environmental forces/trends on health care marketing
- Recommend strategies to maximize opportunities and overcome

Assignment Topic: Environmental Forces and Trends

Environmental forces and trends (i.e., competitors, new technologies, socioeconomic, population and business factors, and changing regulations) can have a tremendous impact on the success of an organization's marketing plan. Therefore, it is important for health care leaders to continuously assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of these forces and trends to ensure that their organizations are applying the appropriate marketing strategies. For this Assignment, you need to conduct a SWOT analysis of an environmental force or trend and consider how it might impact your own health care organization.

To prepare:
- Select a contemporary environmental force/trend, such as politics in health care, new technological advances in health care, the impact of recession/economic issues on utilization of health care, etc. Using the Walden Library, locate and review a scholarly article that discusses this force/trend.

- Reflect on your own health care organization. Imagine you have been hired as a marketing consultant to help guide your organization in understanding evolving environmental forces/trends that may impact marketing.

Note: If you do not currently work for a health care organization, you may select one that is of interest to you.

The Assignment

In a 4- to 5-page report, address the following:

- Analyze the environmental force/trend you selected. Include how the organization in the article is using the force/trend to better understand itself.

- With your selected health care organization in mind, conduct a SWOT analysis of the environmental force/trend you selected.
Note: Be sure to use the SWOT Analysis Template in this week's Learning Resources.

- Analyze how the force/trend might impact the marketing of your organization. Recommend strategies to maximize opportunities and overcome threats.

Note: Your Assignment must be written in standard edited English. Be sure to support your work with at least five high-quality references, including two from peer-reviewed journals. Refer to the Essential Guide to APA Style for Walden Students to ensure that your in-text citations and reference list are correct.

References

Article 1- Exploring the e-cigarette e-commerce marketplace: Identifying Internet e-cigarette marketing characteristics and regulatory gaps by Tim K. Mackey, Angela Miner, and Raphael E. Cuomo

Article 2 - Physicians under the Influence: Social Psychology and Industry Marketing Strategies by Sunita Sah and Adriane Fugh-Berman

Article 3 - Rationalising prescribing: Evidence, marketing and practice-relevant knowledge by Sarah Wadmann and Lia E. Bang

Article 4 - The NHS and market forces in healthcare: the need for organisational ethics by Lucy Frith