Introduction
Ring Medical is a branch of Ring Group Company that offers a variety of services to institutions and individuals. The 1984 financial results of this company were not good; therefore, the managers were forced to develop strategies that would ensure this company made profits in the years that followed.
It is necessary to note that all players were given opportunities to develop concepts and products that would help the company to dominate local markets. Ring Medical developed the HCS-100 that was expected to generate profits for the company. This paper is an analysis of the suggestions to promote this product through increased sales.
Recommendations for Product Positioning
Product positioning involves strategic planning that will ensure a company takes advantage of the prevailing market conditions to make sales and generate profits. This is usually motivated by the need to fill gaps that exist due to the inefficiencies created by other products or a vacuum that has not been filled for a long time.
Marketing enables a company to utilize the skills and knowledge of employees that have been invested in innovative products. It is necessary to explain that marketing strategies must reflect the position of a company in terms of competitions with other similar operators. A good product can fail to meet its market targets due to poor marketing strategies employed by a company.
The HCS-100 was one of the latest technologies that were designed to reduce costs and improve efficiency in hospitals but it seems there were very poor marketing strategies that led to the failure of this product to raise the expected revenue.
Ring Medical had two marketing options to choose from a variety of marketing alternatives available. An effective product positioning must give investors an option of choosing between cost production and revenue generating. This means that marketing a new product should involve skills that will enable consumers to identify whether the product will reduce costs involved or enhance the performance of various services.
However, Ring Medical had to evaluate the appropriateness of each strategy before choosing which one to use. The following are some of the advantages and disadvantages of cost production and revenue enhancing perspectives that should be analyzed before implementing any marketing strategy.
Cost production means that the product will enable the consumer to incur few costs if he buys a product. This means the product will reduce costs associated with operational procedures that may be uneconomical. Most companies adopt procedures that are very expensive and which cannot be sustained by their budgets.
However, it is important to state that a cost effective product will enable the consumer to cut costs associated with the processes of acquiring, producing and distributing their services or goods. Therefore, this strategy will emphasize on the need to improve efficiency and quality of services offered.
Lastly, This option gives the consumer chances to ensure that this investment has good returns due to efficient production processes used in various stages. However, this strategy may not be appropriate in situations where the need to have high quality goods dopes not override the importance of operating within the budgets allocated by the company. Therefore, this was not going to be an effective strategy to be used by Ring Medical.
On the other hand, a revenue enhancing device is one that allows a company to generate profits by increasing sales or promoting efficiency. These products are usually produced to help other products to perform their duties well. It is necessary to explain that the HCS-100 was a revenue enhancing product since it could not exist on its own. It relied on other products to perform its functions.
However, in its absence the other products will not be effective and this may hinder the quality of services offered. It is necessary to understand that a revenue enhancing product like this HCS-100 must be used in case other issues are constant. This means that a company cannot buy a revenue enhancing devices when it is experiencing losses.
On the other hand, a company that is stagnating in profits and losses can adopt this technology and this will become a good step towards achieving their goals. This device is not a compulsory requirement by most companies and thus its marketers must put this into consideration when marketing this product.
Therefore, Ring Medical should adopt this product positioning recommendation since it will reflect the contributions of this product to a company. Most hospitals will require a cost effective communication device that will ensure doctors, patients and other stakeholders communicate easily without any challenges.
Communication is an important aspect in all healthcare institutions and this they must acquire products that are very effective. However, it should be understood that before Ring Medical developed this product there was no serious challenge facing healthcare institutions.
Therefore, this product should adopt revenue enhancing marketing approach to ensure consumers are not distracted by the notion that this product will exist on its own. The fear to increase unnecessary expenses will hinder the marketing strategy used by this company if it does not place emphasis on quality of work to be done by this product.
Ring Medical has focused very much on healthcare facilities and has assumed that they are the ones that require these services more than other sectors. However, this strategy is wrong and will not generate any profits for this company.
The data provided show that despite this company setting high standards and expecting to generate a lot of sales by selling these products this has not been achieved eight months after the product was launched. This means that there are serious challenges not only in terms of marketing strategies but also that audience targeted by this product.
Ring Medical should focus on other companies to ensure it maximizes on the available market since over dependence on one client will expose this company to risks. First, competition will set in and the medical client may get another cheap supplier. This means that this company will be forced to lower its pieces or stop supplying the product to medical facilities.
This will be a major blow since it will take time before this company gets another client. Secondly, health institutions may decode to produce theory products and reduce the costs incurred in acquiring them. This will mean that this company will be forced to stop producing and supplying this product until it gets another client.
Lastly, health facilities are adopting cheap technologies that will ensure health services are available at affordable prices. This means that they may soon get subsidies in other services or develop other technologies to manage all communication matters.
Therefore, this means that Ring Medical will be forced to seek another alternative. Lastly, this company is over depending on one product sand in case there is competition from another well established company it may be forced to stop producing the HCS-100.
Even though, Ring Medical has invented this technology and there are indications that it may be useful in healthcare institutions the company must develop effective marketing strategies that will ensure it dominates in supplying this product to health facilities. This means that the fact that it has produced a good product is not enough to guarantee that the product will be bought.
Therefore, there are some considerations the company must observe in choosing and implementing its market strategies. First, it should ensure that all relevant stakeholders are involved in developing the strategy. This will ensure that all key players are given opportunities to express their decisions and suggestions. When ideas are shared it will be easy to minimize conflicts since there will be consensus on the issues being discussed.
Secondly, it will be easy to identify marketing channels that will enable the company to supply this product to consumers within a short period. It is important to state that marketing should reflect the urgency of the product to reach the intended consumers without delays. In addition, there are various skills that must be considered when selecting marketing channels to be used to supply this product.
Even though, the company had used both the executive and commissioned marketers to promote this product it failed to yield the expected results due to some reasons. First, the company may have hand picked marketers without scrutinizing their marketing abilities.
Marketing is not an easy task since it requires excellent knowledge regarding the product being sold and the behavior of consumers. In addition, a good marketer must possess excellent communication skills that are essential in promoting understanding between the company and its clients.
The company should adopt a short organizational chain that links it with its consumers directly. This will ensure that there are no conflicts associated with long negotiations due to hierarchies. This chain should be managed by its leaders that are independent of other roles of the company.
This is a new product and this means that the company must develop a working framework that will ensure it does not waste time and money in this product at the expense of other issues.
The company should not focus all its attention on this product and forget that there are other pertinent issues to be solved by its employees. However, this does not mean that it should employ new workers. Those that are already working should be assigned new roles to enable the company to avoid recruiting new workers.
In addition, this company should let the department I charge of this product to be independent. Even though, the product and employees belong to Ring Medical it is important to explain that they (product and employees) require anonymity. This will give these employees opportunities to explore various marketing issues and develop effective ways of promoting its product.
However, they should be answerable to the same authority they used to report to before this product was developed. Lastly, this company relies on health institutions as its chief consumer; however, it should be understood that these facilities have long procurement processes that may take weeks before they are allowed to acquire a new product.
This company should establish a separate procurement department to handle all matters regarding this product. This department can also manage all issues regarding the product by performing the roles of the quality assurance department. However, it is important to explain that this department should not conduct other activities that are not related with this product.
The company must motivate its employees and consumers to ensure this product achieves its market target. This means that all employees working to promote this product must be treated well to ensure they are motivated to perform better than they used to do.
The 20 % commission seems to be too little and adding this amount to 22.5 % will not do any harm to the company; in fact, this may help marketers to be committed to their work. Secondly, this product may require regular maintenance and repair services and this may be a factor that is discouraging may consumers from purchasing it since they do not want to incur extra costs.
However, this company can decide to offer these services free for the first six months. This will encourage clients to purchase this product in two ways. First, they will not be required to pay the costs above until after the agreed period ends.
Therefore, they will not fear that this product will strain their budgets. Secondly, they will have confidence that this product will not break down easily since this company has already assured them that they will be offered free services within the first six months of purchasing this product. This will give them confidence that the product is of a high quality.
Organizational constraints have always interfered with marketing strategies due to the following reasons. Different stakeholders experience various challenges regarding implementing g new policies that will promote new products. This company has developed a new product and it is struggling to market it. Everybody seems to be actively involved in this process and this leads to confusions.
It is important to state that there is lack of distinctions between the roles played by different stakeholders. For instance, some employees are reluctant to present their views regarding this product because they do not know which office is responsible. Therefore, the company must ensure everything is straight by developing an effective work framework that will ensure workers know what they are supposed to do.
In addition, this company has failed to identify the roles and position of the program developer and other senior workers like managers. Therefore, the developer thinks that he should take all roles of marketing this product while other company officials think that these roles belong to them.
Conclusion
Marketing is a challenging activity if a company does not plan how to manage it. In addition, a new product may require different marketing strategies that may involve restructuring a company and their roles of its employees. Products should be marketed based on their functions of either promoting sales or reducing costs. However, these can be combined depending on the product or service.
Organizational constraints are serious threats to effective marketing but this can me managed by establishing independent marketing department that will be in charge of promoting new products.