Good Healthcare Market Research And Analysis Essay Example

Large durable medical equipment and medical supply company

ABSTRACT
Healthcare providers such as medical equipment and medical supply companies face a dynamic and competitive environment. The most loyal customers are usually the customers who make frequent and repeat purchases across a range of services. Thus, developing customer relationships is a very important for repeat customers and maintaining customer loyalty (Essentials of Customer Marketing). As the competition increases and market share becomes tight it is important for the medical equipment and medical supply company to implement the best practices to improve customer loyalty and keep its business profitable.
Contemporary best practices that can help to improve customer loyalty in the healthcare market are: focus on customer, engage and excite the customer, develop products that the customers love, be consistent and creative and finally say thank you to the customers (Healthcare data solutions). Customer loyalty depends on factors such as consistent positive emotional experiences, perceived value of an experience and physical attribute based-satisfaction (Beyond Philosophy). Thus, emotions especially positive ones play a strong role in maintaining customer loyalty.
Customer loyalty measurements include the business customer’s retention rates and how much and how frequently the customers purchase. There are multiple benefits that loyal, repeat customers offer to health care organizations. The recommendations to improve customer loyalty are think like customers, understand the customer’s definition of value, use technology tools effectively and meet the specific needs of each stage of the loyalty cycle (Customer Loyalty, Jill Griffin, 2010).

CUSTOMER LOYALTY- BEST PRACTICES AND METRICS

Healthcare providers such as medical equipment and medical supply companies face a dynamic and extremely competitive environment. Marketing plans are developed in response to the larger macro environment which cannot be controlled (Essentials of Customer Marketing). Customer loyalty and retention is a significant issue for this durable medical equipment company since there are very few repeat customers and many are new customers. Therefore understanding the customer and making changes that promote customer loyalty are vital to improve business for this medical equipment company in the highly competitive healthcare environment. As the competition increases and market share becomes tight it is important for the medical equipment and medical supply company to implement the best practices to improve customer loyalty and keep its business profitable.
The most loyal customers are usually the most satisfied customers who make frequent and repeat purchases across a range of services. This relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty holds through for across several different industries including healthcare. Thus, developing customer relationships is a very important for repeat customers and maintaining customer loyalty (Essentials of Customer Marketing, Chapter 7). Customer relationship should strive to engage and excite the customer who experiences the brand for the first time (Healthcare data solutions website). Customer loyalty depends on factors such as consistent positive emotional experiences, perceived value of an experience and physical attribute based-satisfaction (Beyond Philosophy). Thus, emotions play a strong role in maintaining customer loyalty.
There are different types of customer loyalty: no loyalty, inertia loyalty, latent loyalty and premium loyalty (Customer Loyalty, Jill Griffin, 2010). Loyalty measurements include the business customer’s retention rates and how much and how frequently the customers purchase. The average American company loses 20-40 percent of its customers per year and therefore a long-term approach to building customer loyalty is required (Customer Loyalty, Jill Griffin, 2010).
Five possible ways to build customer loyalty for the large durable medical equipment and medical supply company are as follows (Healthcare data solutions):

Focus on customer

Engage and excite the customer
Develop products the customers love
Be consistent and creative
Say thank you
It is very important for the medical supply and medical equipment company to focus on the customers and their needs. The most profitable offerings for this company are scooters, walkers, hospital rental beds and mobility equipment. Developing products that focus on what the customers want, love and value is an integral part of customer loyalty (Healthcare data solutions). Engaging and exciting the customer can be done through the sales team, blogs, email marketing, social media, reviews, newsletters and online advertisements (Healthcare data solutions).
Marketing in a health care environment requires investing, rewarding and personalizing at every step of the marketing funnel (Healthcare data solutions). Therefore the marketing mix strategies need to be carefully thought out. The more interactions the company’s team has with physicians or hospital administrators prior to becoming customers the better the chances of developing customer loyalty. In addition, aggressively seeking out customer complaints helps with customer loyalty (Customer Loyalty, Jill Griffin, 2010).

CUSTOMER LOYALTY BENEFITS

As expected, there are multiple benefits that loyal, repeat customers offer to health care organizations. The economic benefits include lower cost to serve and more customer referrals (Economics behind Customer Loyalty). By increasing the rate of customer retention by a few percentage points, healthcare providers can increase their profits by 25-100 percent (Customer Loyalty, Jill Griffin, 2010). Thus, revenue becomes steady as loyal customers are more profitable to the business since they tend to purchase higher margin products more frequently.

RECOMMENDATIONS TO IMPROVE CUSTOMER LOYALTY

It is important for the team from the medical supply and medical equipment company to think like customers and utilize and create need-based marketing and customer-care tools in order to be more effective (Customer Loyalty, Jill Griffin, 2010).
The team should aggressively seek out complaints with respect to the products and services offered and treat the complaints seriously by fixing problem areas. In addition, it is important to really understand the customer’s definition of value by investing in loyalty research in order to understand how the company can deliver value (Customer Loyalty, Jill Griffin, 2010).
Customers grow loyal in stages and by meeting the specific needs of the each stage; the company has a better chance of converting a buyer into a loyal customer. The five stages of loyalty and the purchase cycle are awareness, initial purchase, post- purchase evaluation, decision to repurchase and repurchase. It is also very important for the medical supply and medical equipment company to use technology tools such as customer self-service, email-management and stay that way in order to be responsive to the customer and develop loyalty (Customer Loyalty, Jill Griffin, 2010). Thus, by implementing these 4 recommendations: think like customers, understand the customer’s definition of value, use technology tools effectively and meet the specific needs of each stage of the loyalty cycle the medical supply and equipment company should be able to improve customer loyalty.

INITIAL TRAINING PLAN

For the initial training plan, the team at the medical supply and medical equipment company should encourage customers to grow loyal in stages by meeting the specific needs of the each stage of the customer loyalty cycle. The stages are awareness, initial purchase, post- purchase evaluation, decision to repurchase and repurchase (Customer Loyalty, Jill Griffin, 2010).
Once the customer has a need for a medical supply or equipment product, they would start to look for more information from sources such as personal sources (family and friends), commercial sources (ads, sales people) and mass media. This is the awareness stage and at this stage the customer knows the company exists but has little bond with the company (Customer Loyalty, Jill Griffin, 2010). The next stage is the initial purchase and once this is done the company has the opportunity to start nurturing the customer. The product can influence the customer positively or negatively therefore the team should take care to design products that match the customer’s expectations and result in high levels of customer satisfaction. Satisfaction is a customer’s feeling of pleasure or disappointment resulting from comparing a product’s perceived performance to expectations (Philip Kotler, Connecting with Customers, 2009).
The customer consciously or sub-consciously evaluates the transaction and this is known as the post-purchase evaluation step of the customer loyalty cycle. Next is the decision to repurchase and it is dependent on the customer feeling a strong emotional bond with the product (Customer Loyalty, Jill Griffin, 2010). It is vitally important for the team to realize that motivating the customer to repurchase is dependent on the idea in the customer’s mind that switching to a competitor will cost the customer in terms of time, performance or money (Customer Loyalty, Jill Griffin, 2010). The loyal customer rejects the competition and repurchases from the company whenever an item is needed. These are the truly loyal customers that the team should serve and nurture.

CONCLUSION

Staying close to the customer requires considerable effort, commitment and follow-up but the rewards will definitely be worth it in terms of increased market share and overall profitability (Customer Loyalty, Jill Griffin, 2010). If the medical supply and medical equipment company successfully implements these suggested recommendations then it should be able to improve customer loyalty and enjoy more profitability. Furthermore, loyalty programs have a complex effect on customer behavior and can positively reinforce purchase behavior via a virtuous cycle (Tarasi CO, 2013).

REFERENCES:

Essentials of Customer Marketing, http://wow.coursesmart.com/9781449632007/idrpd0e20p1
Introduction to Health Research Methods, http://wow.coursesmart.com/9781449640781/firstsection
Healthcare Data Solutions, retrieved on Jan 15, 2015 from the website, http://www.healthcaredatasolutions.com/5-ways-to-build-customer-loyalty/
Beyond Philosophy, http://beyondphilosophy.com/customer-experience/customer-loyalty/
Jill Griffin, May 2010, Customer Loyalty Summary, How to Earn it, How to Keep it, Success Book Summary
The Economics behind Customer Loyalty: Using Coalition Program Assets to Turbo-Charge Results, retrieved on Jan 15, 2015 from the website, http://www.sli21.com/?whitepaper=the-economics-behind-customer-loyalty
Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller, 2009, Connecting with Customers, Creating Customer Value, Satisfaction and Loyalty Chapter 4, A Framework for Marketing Management, Fourth edition, Published by Prentice Hall
Tarasi CO, Bolton RN, Gustafsson A and Walker B, Jan 2013, Relationship Characteristics and Cash Flow Variability: Implications for Satisfaction, Loyalty, and Customer Portfolio Management, Journal of Service Research