Mission and Vision
The stated mission of NMC Healthcare is “to provide advanced healthcare services to people from all sections of society.” As part of its commitment to this goal, NMC seeks to uphold ethical medical practice and prevent malpractice to ensure the high quality of service provided to all customers. Moreover, the company is concerned with providing personalised care and maintaining a service environment characterised by compassion, care and friendliness. This means that accessibility, ethics, quality, and patient-centred care are the four primary qualities integral to NMC’s mission.
The company’s vision represents the primary goal that NMC seeks to achieve, which is “to be the trusted healthcare provider across the globe, driven by excellence in innovation, quality, teamwork, advanced technologies, patient safety and customised care offerings”. To act in compliance with its vision, NMC needs to tailor its strategy to the customers’ needs and the organisation’s needs.
The company has already made some steps to fulfil its mission and vision as part of its strategic activities. For example, NMC Healthcare has made significant progress in expanding globally by opening new chains of clinics in many locations in Europe, the Middle East and South America. In most cases, geographic expansion was made possible through specialised services, such as maternity, fertility, and long-term care.
Marketing Mix Strategy
Product
NMC provides acute, primary, and long-term care services, which are its primary products. In line with the company’s strategy, the range of services provided is wide in most geographical areas of its operation. The wide variety of specialities and services available is part of NMC’s value proposition to its customers. However, in some locations, services are restricted to certain specialities, such as fertility treatment and long-term care. These locations include the United Kingdom and Latin America, which were targeted as part of NMC’s global expansion efforts.
Price
Because the accessibility of healthcare services is a significant component of the organisation’s mission, affordable prices are crucial to NMC’s marketing mix. This helps to attract individual clients, thus raising the popularity of NMC’s services among local residents. Moreover, NMC’s clinics and hospitals have become popular among international medical tourists due to their high quality-price ratio. The competitive price structure is also favourable for corporate partnerships with insurers, which are among NMC’s key lines of business.
Place
NMC was founded in Abu Dhabi, which remains the location of its headquarters to this day. Soon after the company proved to be profitable, other branches in Abu Dhabi and the UAE were opened. In line with global expansion efforts, NMC also targeted other Gulf countries, including Oman and Saudi Arabia, and Europe and Latin America. The company has branches in various locations, including Spain, Slovakia, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Nigeria and some other countries. The wide geographical reach of NMC’s services enables the company to grow further and fulfil its mission to become a globally recognised healthcare service provider.
Promotion
NMC utilises a comprehensive approach to promotion and follows current trends in marketing to attract diverse customers. Traditional methods of advertising, such as television and poster ads, are actively used by the company. Additionally, NMC has engaged in several digital marketing campaigns, which involved Google Search ads and social media advertising. An important part of the company’s marketing plan is the collaboration with insurance providers since patients who obtained NMC’s services through their insurance can recommend them to friends and family members.
Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning Model
Segmentation
To identify the markets for its services, the company relies on geographic and demographic segmentation. Entrance into new markets is achieved primarily through means of geographical expansion because most people are likely to want to obtain healthcare services from local providers instead of travelling to a different city or country. In addition, the company relies heavily on demographic segmentation and aims to ensure that its clients are diverse in terms of age, nationality, and income. NMC analyses the demographic characteristics of local people and aims to reflect them in its patient base.
Targeting
NMC follows a differentiated marketing strategy, which means that it targets large groups of potential customers within the market. Despite the affordability of NMC’s services, the primary targeted market involves people with a medium income level. They are likely to spend more on healthcare services than those from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Nationality-based target markets are also evident in NMC’s strategy. For example, for some years after the founding of NMC, it was largely recognised as an Indian healthcare provider. To attract Western ex-pats living in the UAE, as well as UAE nationals, the company utilised experiential marketing and quality improvement. To this day, NMC aims for diversity in its patient base, which requires targeting specific, nationality-based markets.
Positioning
NMC’s positioning is that of a moderate-quality, low-price healthcare provider. While the company is unable to provide the same level of experience quality as luxury private healthcare provided, it seeks to monitor the quality of its operations and services close by relying on patient appraisals and internal audits. The prices are on the lower end of the spectrum, which proves to be a competitive advantage supporting NMC’s in the market populated by other private healthcare providers. Figure 1 presents NMC’s positioning on the quality-price spectrum.
STEEP Analysis
Socio-Cultural Forces
The socio-cultural environment in which NMC operates is characterised by two main factors. First, there is a high availability of medical services in the modern world, with most countries offering some form of universal healthcare to their residents. Secondly, health promotion efforts have made people more aware of their health issues and prevention needs. This is particularly evident in young adults, who proved to be more health-conscious than the previous generations.
Technological Forces
Developments in technology provide healthcare organisations with excellent opportunities for optimising service delivery and maintaining communication internally and externally. Additionally, technological advancement has impacted people’s expectations. In the modern world, healthcare organisations are expected to keep up with trends in technology, and the ability of an organisation to use recent technologies effectively influences its image.
Economic and Environmental Forces
Both economic and environmental forces are crucial to healthcare organisations. On the one hand, economic fluctuations in the UAE and all over the globe and the threat of another future recession can make individuals and organisations hesitant to invest in private healthcare and insurance coverage. On the other hand, healthcare organisations face pressure from environmental authorities and activists to reduce waste and use resources effectively. Environmental changes, such as pollution and ozone layer depletion, are also crucial to healthcare in the long term. They might contribute to population health issues and increase the demand for services.
Political Forces
The political environment in which NMC operates is highly favourable to healthcare organisations. The UAE has recently increased the support provided to private healthcare institutions as part of its strategy to improve population health. The policies that affect private insurance in the UAE and all over the globe include mandatory corporate health insurance, hospital privatisation, which affect the levels of demand and supply in private healthcare. Nevertheless, governmental support comes at a cost, and private care providers are monitored by governments for service quality, efficiency and other characteristics.