Factors Impacting Marketing Health Care Functions - Research Paper Example

Factors Impacting Marketing Health Care Functions at the Cleveland Clinic Consultant Report Introduction The Cleveland Clinic is an award-winning health care organization maintaining operating revenues of approximately $5.9 billion, gleaned from its headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio and its many diverse national affiliates across the United States. The Cleveland Clinic is currently positioned amongst competition under marketing models of value (namely pricing) that bring this health care facility much more positive brand reputation. This health care organization, despite its many accolades, has been unable to establish brand loyalty with key market segments, thus requiring consultancy services to improve its market position. The Market Research Process The Cleveland Clinic must first define the problem in order to create an effective marketing strategy. In this case, value positioning is not achieving the revenue gains expected as the clinic is not securing the volume of revenues required to achieve capital growth for long-term expansion efforts. Pricing positioning, therefore, is not effective for sustainable growth. Having identified the problem, the clinic must determine the specific managerial objectives that will be fulfilled by market research. In this case, value positioning is gaining market interest from price-sensitive consumers which are insufficient for gaining new market attention. The Cleveland Clinic must establish a specific objective aligned with market research efforts, which, in this case, is to increase revenues by changing consumer perceptions of brand image. Having identified the objective of altering consumer perceptions of brand, the tangible design process must be considered. Consumer attitudes are complex considerations maintaining many facets that are difficult to measure statistically, including values, potential ambivalence, and even social lifestyle. Measuring values and attitudes requires a great deal of inference, since attitudes cannot be measured using direct strategies (Henerson, Morris & Fitz-Gibbon, 1987; Henslin, 2005). It would be more effective for the Cleveland Clinic to utilize a qualitative research design as this provides opportunities to explore the richness of the relationship between consumer attitude and the psycho-social meaning that consumers place on the health care process and their role within it. These are necessary considerations if the health care facility is to achieve an effective positioning strategy. The organization will utilize a focus group structure and questionnaires to more fully engage the emotional and motivational factors of a randomized sample of consumers. The next step for the clinic is to determine the appropriate internal stakeholders charged with conducting the research process. Porter & Teisberg (2012) identify that the Cleveland Clinic is renowned for its emphasis on communities of practice, a cohesive knowledge sharing culture under a Patients First! organizational model in which internal stakeholder relationship management is a critical human capital advantage over competition. To maximize the qualitative research process, experts within the organizational structure will be assigned to engage recruited consumers. The marketing division, two identified experts in sociology and psychology, and one on-staff nursing professional will moderate the focus groups. Since it is practical to assume there will be multiple, diverse variables of human behavior and cognition that will determine perceptions of the health care process, diversity in the research process must be representative. Questionnaires will be delivered to a broad, random sample of local community consumers asking for participation in an important health care study. To ensure accuracy and validity of data collection methods, recruited internal stakeholders will consult to develop an appropriate script for utilization in the focus group process. This is necessary as in a focus group, very strong emotions may not always be openly discussed in this social circle, due to cultural disparities between participants (Krueger & Casey, 2000). The recruited stakeholders, utilizing their individualized tacit knowledge, will determine an appropriate template for discussion without over-emphasizing strong emotional factors associated with cultural differences. To ensure proper enthusiasm by focus group participants, the majority of script determinations will be offered by the recruited sociology and psychology expert. Bias is significantly reduced in the research collection process under a community of practice model with multiple stakeholder assessments included in analysis. Analysis of findings from the focus group and the returned questionnaires should be correlated to identify any potential links or psychological parallels that might contribute to a homogenous set of values from consumers about the health care process and, specifically, the Cleveland Clinic. As complex attitudes cannot be measured utilizing statistical models, the diverse stakeholder experts will utilize their explicit knowledge associated with trusted and respected models of sociology and psychology to facilitate a more effective attitudinal analysis. An expert in report processing will be recruited to assist in creating a presentable, simplistic report that is relevant for a broad variety of internal and external stakeholders to assist in understanding the dimensions uncovered in the focus group and questionnaires. Steps Requiring Use of External Public Data The sampling process is one of the most fundamental steps that requires use of external public data. The Cleveland Clinic stakeholders should be consulting with local data sources, such as the CIA, that provides local demographic information on community stakeholders. Such reports include criteria for establishing geographic segmentation, economic disbursement in the region, and cluster diagrams illustrating population density in urban and rural areas that are serviced by the clinic. To ensure a broader cross-section of diverse consumer attitudes, gaining an appropriate mailing list that represents randomized targeting is required which is best achievable through census scrutiny. Developing a template for discussion in the focus group will also require utilization of research journals and studies that have utilized or determined a best practice methodology for focus group moderation and evaluation. Such studies are available in common databases such as ProQuest or Emerald that will help to identify important benchmarks in data collection that could contribute more value to the moderation and discussion processes during the focus groups periods. The analysis process will also rely on the same aforementioned research journals in key domains of human behavior and sociology to assist in making important, inductive determinations against formulated hypotheses that might be developed during the focus group observations by the recruited internal experts in sociology and psychology. Recommended Survey Template There are multiple dimensions of service that must be considered in order to properly position the Cleveland Clinic as it is aligned with consumer preferences and attitudes about health care service delivery. 1. How often do you utilize health care facilities? Weekly 2 to 3 Times Per Month Once Monthly Every 2-3 Months 2. Have you ever utilized the Cleveland Clinic for any procedure or consultation Yes No (If no, please skip to question 6) 3. Overall, how satisfied were you with Cleveland Clinic physician care? Very Unsatisfied Unsatisfied Somewhat Satisfied Very Satisfied 4. Overall, how satisfied were you with Cleveland Clinic nursing care? Very Unsatisfied Unsatisfied Somewhat Satisfied Very Satisfied 5. In 100 words or less, please describe why you indicated your selections related to the Cleveland Clinic. _______________________________________________________________ 6. When thinking of your last experience with another health care facility, what THREE factors were most important for selecting this facility for your health care needs? _____________ ________________ __________________ 7. Please rank your three selections in order of importance to you personally _____________ ________________ __________________ 8. Based on your experience, how likely would you be to recommend your last health care facility to others? Very unlikely Somewhat Likely Very Likely 9. Why, in no more than 75 words, did you make your selection in question 8 ______________________________________________________________ 10. Using only four keywords, please provide a description of your feelings toward the Cleveland Clinic and its role in community relations and health care provision. 11. Please rank, between one and 10, how you feel the Cleveland Clinic compares to competing health care facilities in the Cleveland area. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12. When thinking of service quality in the health care industry, how important to you is the interpersonal relationship between patient and staff as compared to pricing considerations? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12. What recommendations would you give to the Cleveland Clinic to improve services? As previously identified, value positioning based on pricing competitiveness is not creating the expected return on investment for the marketing expenditures associated with this positioning strategy. Therefore, it is necessary to, first, identify the frequency by which the survey participants utilize health care services. If there are correlations between frequency and experiential knowledge in consumer segments, the Cleveland Clinic will be able to focus promotions and positioning strategy with rate of recurrence. Further, the survey requires semi-structured opportunities for the respondents to indicate unforeseen or unpredictable responses that are associated with real-life sentiment or emotions. The questions requiring elongated responses are designed to build a richness of sentiment and motivations that will be necessary to change positioning aligned with perceptions of service quality, pricing, service delivery, or any other socially-related aspect that might be tied to cultural preferences. Closed-ended surveys providing no opportunities for breadth of consumer attitude would forbid a concrete understanding of complex emotionally-based evaluation of health care providers. Further, by providing opportunities to compare competition with the Cleveland Clinic, it can help the organizers of this market research process to identify any potential benchmarks or weaknesses that can be worked out of the promotional model to better engage consumers. The survey also maintains a ranked order opportunity to create statistically-supported knowledge about consumer sentiment toward Cleveland Clinic homogenously. The survey will be utilized to supplement the qualitative research findings in the focus group and the questionnaires, providing more valuable charted statistics to assist in identifying what consumers genuinely value in their health care experiences. A Visual Representation of Market Group Targeted The Cleveland Clinic hypothesizes, based on inductive rationale, that price-sensitive consumers are not sustainable markets for revenue growth and advancing the brand reputation of the clinic in the community. The above representation illustrates a new variety of socially-minded consumers that would, theoretically, value the more important constructs of the business model involving cohesive organizational culture and relationship development. The Cleveland Clinic must face reality: It is often the older market segment that utilizes health care services regularly based on tangible health care problems occurring during advancing years. To test whether relationship constructs are important, the above visual representation illustrates older market needs as associated with interpersonal competencies of in-organization clinical expertise. Identifying Statistics on Health Care Procurement Source: Health Pac Online. (2013). Health Care Statistics in the United States. Retrieved February 16, 2013 from http://www.healthpaconline.net/health-care-statistics-in-the-united-states.htm When determining the appropriate market segments to target for the research, it is necessary to understand the largest segments that utilize health care facilities regularly. Values associated with service, competency and satisfaction could be impacted by the demographics utilizing different forms of health care coverage, whether independent or sponsored by employment or government. If health insurance provision is indeed a variable in the equation, it will assist in targeting appropriate segments with relevant promotional materials aligned with certain values or needs. Why Customers Leave their Health Care Providers The PwC Health Research institute recently surveyed 6,000 consumers to determine what needs were most paramount when selecting health care providers. An overwhelming 70 percent of respondents indicated that they preferred to have all services centralized in a single service location (Fuscaldo, 2012). In this same survey, 65 percent of respondents indicated that they preferred a modern medium by which to communicate and exchange information, such as the Internet or social media (Fuscaldo). Additionally, six out of 10 respondents indicated that the attitude and friendliness of staff was a critical dimension to further utilizing a specific health care provider (Fuscaldo). Based on this research-supported information, there are many implications for the Cleveland Clinic. Porter & Teisberg (2012) identify that the Cleveland Clinic has recently developed a great deal of specialty centers and off-site affiliates that provide certain medical procedures or consultations that are not included in the Cleveland headquarters model. It is recommended, therefore, that the organizational executive leadership begin considering potential re-centralization of important services that can be fulfilled in a single facility. With 70 percent of 6,000 consumers indicating this is a strong preference for retention, the Cleveland Clinic would benefit from altering its physical operational model to better accommodate a contemporary need for one-stop medical service. If recentralization is achievable by closing some affiliates (which saves operational costs for facilities management and inventory holding costs), the business can recover customers that have previously defected to centralized competition by utilizing promotion to illustrate a change in place marketing and convenience. The Cleveland Clinic hypothesized that it could be a potential factor in consumer decision-making processes to focus on service excellence and relationship development as critical success strategies. The research-supported acknowledgement that 60 percent of surveyed respondents demand friendliness and positive relationship-minded attitudes with internal staff members provides opportunities for recommendations to focus more on promoting the organizational culture of the business. Craven, Hirnle & Jensen (2013) strongly iterate that many consumers utilizing health care services must have their safety needs fulfilled as the most prominent motivator. Needs for belonging cannot be addressed until the patient achieves comfort and trust, which could contribute to why relationship considerations were so important to 60 percent of surveyed consumers when deciding on health care providers. It is recommended that the Cleveland Clinic develop a promotional strategy that emphasizes patient security underpinned by competence in developing nurturing patient/staff relationships to facilitate more effective positioning. Shin, Park & Kim (2006) call the patient experience a bio-psycho-social experience, encompassing multiple dimensions of emotions, inherent social needs, as well as physical health provision that will determine positive responses to the health care facility. Executive Summary The Cleveland Clinic requires new opportunities to reposition the business away from value presentation (which typically involves pricing). However, without understanding market characteristics, repositioning could be costly and ineffective in the long-term. The clinic will be recruited random samples of varying demographics in the local community to gain a broad cross-section of attitudes, emotions and needs stemming from diverse markets. Utilizing qualitative research design, supported by internal staff members, the organization will gain critical knowledge of what drives consumer decision-making in order to attract and retain important revenue-building customer segments. Based on statistical research, it is recommended that the Cleveland Clinic consider recentralizing its currently-dispersed affiliate programs in order to better satisfy consumer needs for convenience that have been identified through existing research studies. Further, based on findings associated with care delivery, Cleveland Clinic must be exploiting and capitalizing on its existing competencies related to communities of practice and a cohesive, dedicated organizational culture to better promote the facility. Based on the findings achieved through questionnaire distribution, focus group implementation and a supplementary survey, the business can identify important correlations to determine a new positioning direction. References Craven, Ruth, Hirnle, Constance & Jensen, Sharon. (2013). Fundamentals of Nursing: Human Health and Function (7th ed.). Wolters, Kluwer and Lippincott. Fuscaldo, Donna. (2012). What Patients want, expect from health care providers, Fox Business. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal- finance/2012/08/07/what-patients-want-expect-from-health-care-providers/ Health Pac Online. (2013). Health Care Statistics in the United States. Retrieved February 16, 2013 from http://www.healthpaconline.net/health-care-statistics-in-the-united-states.htm Henerson, M.E., Morris, L.L. & Fitz-Gibbon, C.T. (1987). How to Measure Attitudes. Newbury Park: Sage Publications. Henslin, James M. (2005). Sociology: A Down to Earth Approach (7th ed.). Boston: A&B Publishing. Krueger, R.A. & Casey, M.A. (2000). Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Porter, Michael E. & Teisberg, Eizabeth O. (2012). The Cleveland Clinic: Growth Strategy 2012, Harvard Business School. Retrieved February 17, 2013 from www.hbsp.harvard.edu/ educators. Shin, H., Park, Y. & Kim, M.J. (2006). Predictors of maternal sensitivity during the early Postpartum Period, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 55(4), pp.425-434. Read More