Principles of Marketing

• Marketing is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.
• Prerequisites for marketing include: analysis of market opportunities, selection of the target market, and development of a marketing mix.
• The marketing role includes identifying goods and services desired by consumers and marketing those goods and services on behalf of a company.

Marketing Mix Elements

• Product: any offering (goods or services) to the market by a company
• Price: The money customers pay to obtain the product
• Place: Efforts to ensure product availability to customers in the market
• Promotion: Efforts by a company to ensure product sales to customers through information about the product's advantages

Health Care: Needs vs. Wants

• Healthcare professionals are responsible for addressing patients' needs
• Many consumers seek professional responses to their wants
• Need: A condition of deficiency in something
• Want: The wish or desire for something
• Identifying "Who is the Customer?" is essential to uncovering their needs and wants.

Hospital Markets

• Include schools, other hospitals, government agencies, social workers, employers, physicians, judges, nurses, long-term care facilities, managed care organizations, and employees

Evolution of Marketing

• Production Era: Focused on lowering manufacturing costs, lasting from after the U.S. Civil War to the 1920s; operators boosted profits or increased price competitiveness by reducing production costs.
• Sales Era: Followed the production era and lasted roughly twenty years; sales began as people were more connected.
• Marketing Era: Started around the mid-1950s; companies focused on making products customers wanted, shifting from "filling a hole in the factory" to "filling a hole in the market," leading to the rise in market research.
• Holistic Marketing Era: Marketing integrates all aspects of operations to respond effectively to market changes; considers internal awareness of goals, customer focus, and societal impact beyond financial returns.

Marketing Concept/Culture Era

• Focuses on customer orientation, competitor orientation, long-term focus, and profitability.

Environmental Forces Affecting Marketing

• Includes Internal and External Forces
• Internal Environment: Includes factors inside the organization affecting marketing operations, grouped under the Five Ms: Manpower, Money, Machinery, Materials, and Markets.
• The internal environment is controlled by the marketer, and includes sales, marketing, manufacturing, and human resources.
• External Environment: Consists of factors outside the business with little or no control by the marketer.

Micro Environment Constituents

• Suppliers: Provide resources needed by the organization
• Market Intermediaries: Assist in distributing the product or service
• Partners: Separate entities like advertising agencies and research firms
• Customers: The target group
• Competitors: Players in the same market targeting similar customers
• Public: Any group with actual or potential interest affecting the company's ability to serve customers

Macro Environment Divisions

• Demographic: Considers population size, density, location, age, gender, race, and occupation.
• Economic: Influences customer purchasing power and spending patterns, including interest rates, and government funding.
• Physical: Includes the natural environment with climatic conditions and pollution.
• Technological: Includes innovation, research, and technological alternatives
• Political-Legal: Includes laws, government policies, and agencies influencing industry.
• Social-Cultural: Encompasses lifestyle, culture, values, and beliefs.

Planning Processes

• Non-marketing Driven: Involves stakeholders outside the organization with no vested financial interest, such as political grounds and media outlets.
• Marketing Driven: Involves internal stakeholders like owners, investors, and employees, with activities designed to create economic exchange.

Strategic Marketing Process

• Considers stakeholders like customers (patients, physicians)
• Environment includes regulatory, social, technological, economic, and competitive factors
• Society

Target Market

• A specific group of consumers for whom a product or service is designed.
• Market-oriented: The company organizes the activities, products and services to meet the the wants and needs of the customer.

Organizational Marketing Success Requirements

• Listen to customers to identify how to fulfill their needs
• Act on feedback to improve products and communications

Focus on communicating the product's benefits clearly

Prerequisites to Marketing Success include pressure and capacity to be market-oriented, a clear shared Vision of the Market, with actionable First Steps

Changing Health Care Marketplace

• Evolving via the slow process of change
• Accountable Care Organizations (or ACOs) include doctors, hospitals, and health care providers to provide high quality care to Medicare patients voluntairly.

Marketing (4 P's)

• Involves planning and execution of the four marketing mix variables: product, place, promotion, and price
• The marketing mix is the combination of four controllable variables blending them to satisfy the needs of the market.