Healthcare Marketing: John Hopkins Hospital Essay

Introduction

In 1960’s, a marketer by the name E J McCarthy came up with a marketing mix strategy to be used in business when marketing and making marketing strategies. The name of the strategy is called 4Ps; these are initials for product/service, price, promotion and place.

Alongside this marketing mix, a company should choose an appropriate target market for a successful business (Möller, 2006). John Hopkins is a medical facility in Baltimore which has adopted the above marketing strategies as it meets its target customers. This paper analyzes marketing mix (4Ps) and target market of the hospital.

Marketing mix (4Ps)

Product/service

The hospital aims at offering high quality services to its customers. This is facilitated by maintaining high quality medical personnel’s/physicians and undertaking an intensive research on different areas in medicine. Other than resident doctors and medical practitioners, the hospital maintains contacts with experts in certain areas who may be working freelance to offer such services.

This is done to both inpatient and outpatient customers. The level of technology is changing daily in all sectors of an economy; the hospital realizes this and embarked on massive technological improvement.

This ensures that they can deliver quality and timely services to their patients. Other than the medical part of it, all employees whether they belong to an outsourced partner or they are directly employed in the organisation are required to treat customers with courtesy and guide them to the best of their knowledge.

Price

The hospital is used by John Hopkins School of medicine for research and development. In a system which seems to be a return to the society, the hospital charges a reduced cost especially when a patient is treated by/with a student. This does not mean that the quality of the hospital is compromised by student but they are just involved to help them have experience.

When it comes to professional services, the hospital when using its internal facilities and personnel’s it charges a reduce rate. When it calls for experts from other areas, the patient is expected to cater for the physicians expenses and pay a small fee for the use of hospital facilities.

Despite this the hospital has negotiated prices with external experts so the prices for the hospital can be termed as competitive. This move has assisted in making the hospital competitive.

Place

The hospital is situated in Baltimore, which is the largest city in Maryland and a central city for Maryland. The reason why this hospital is situated here is because there is John Hopkins School of medicine and the population that it is able to reach to at this point. The position is strategic and can be easily accessed by a great population of Maryland.

Baltimore is also a central point with offices and other recreation facilities making the hospital strategically placed. The place of the hospital makes its competitive since it is accessible 24 hours in 7days. This is mad possible by good security and transport networks. There are times that the hospital undertake free medical camps in different parts of the country in their effort to market and improve the health of the population.

Promotions

The hospital doubles as a research institute for John Hopkins School of medicine; this makes the experts to interact with the outside world around the hospital and in other places in the world. After developing something, the first people that it aims at assisting are the locals.

They are educated on the development and this forms part of its promotions. On the other hand the hospital calls for medical camps to check the general health of people living in the locality. These moves have made patients be loyal to the hospital.

Why is understanding Marketing Mix important

When developing an efficient marketing strategy, there is need to understand and put into consideration all the 4Ps of marketing. This will help in offering good service to target customers and ensuring that an organisation understands the needs of its customers.

There is no point of producing goods and service which are not consumed by target customers and thus ensuring that quality products are produced, then distributed to appropriate places at an affordable price is important (McNamara, 2009).

Relationship between organization’s marketing and its partnerships

When developing a marketing strategy, it is important for a business to understand the effects that this strategies will have on the outside world. The needed effect is persuasion to potential customers and maintaining the already existing ones. Partnership includes having a good relationship with the outside world; these are people who affect the business for example creditor’s banks and the society.

When there is good partnership, the hospital will be self marketed by the people as they refer other to the facility. To have a good relationship involves offering quality and affordable services to the people and meeting ones obligations as people expect them done (Möller, 2006).

Explain how and why those partnerships are valuable to the organization

Partnerships are valuable to a business since they lead to a good relationship between an organisation and the people the organisation is serving. When there is good relationship, there is customer loyalty which is a valuable asset to a business. Customer loyalty results to an organisation self marketing itself as people are able to refer others to products and services of the said organisations.

Target market

The hospital is located in Baltimore which is the largest city of Maryland; the metropolitan area has a population of 1.5 million people. The locality is known for a wide range of cultural and recreational facilities (The Johns Hopkins Hospital official website, 2010).

The hospital has a wide target market which is not limited to the locality that it is operating in; maternity, dental, in patient, out patients, among others. It offers these services to the old, young, children, female and male patients.

Through its website someone can book for a certain service from whichever the country he may be originating from. There are also special programs for women and children. On time bases, there are some medical seminars conducted by the hospital targeting a certain group for example the youth to train them on different medical issues like HIV-Aids. These are part of its social corporate responsibly

Explain why understanding target market is vital to a successful marketing plan

A target market assists a company to understand the kind of products/services that people it aims to serve require. When the services on demand are known, then the hospital is able to structure its processes to offer exactly that.

On the other hand, to have an ethically conducted business, there is need t understand social, political, cultural and economic factors affecting a certain population. Different people have different expectations and thus an understanding of a target market helps in coming up with an efficient marketing plan and strategy.

Conclusion

For an effective marketing policy and strategy, businesses need to understand 4Ps of marketing and ensure that it can meet the need of its target customers. When this is done, then a company gains competitive advantage this understanding of target customer lead to good partnership between an organization and the outside world.

References

The Johns Hopkins Hospital official website. (2010). Web.

McNamara, P. (2009). 5 ‘marketing opportunities’ for hospitals. Network World, 26(20), 34. Retrieved from MasterFILE Premier database.

Möller, K. (2006). Marketing Mix Discussion – Is the Mix Misleading Us or is We Misreading the Mix?. Journal of Marketing Management, 22(3/4), 439-450. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.