FOR PROF.MACQUEEN ONLY (9)

Hospitals, medical clinics, and other healthcare entities must attract and retain customers to achieve growth and prosperity. Success at attracting and retaining customers ultimately determines the share of the market—the market share—held by entities.

 

One of the most significant obstacles to gaining market share is that of competition. Healthcare organizations compete in what might be considered the most competitive of industries. The term competition brings to mind images of contents and challenges. The Ries and Trout concept that marketing is war and applies to warfare strategies and tactics to the marketing process. Ries and Trout note being customer oriented alone is not enough to achieve marketing success. Entities must also be competitor oriented.

 

According to Ries and Trout, marketing warfare can be waged using four different strategies:

 

The defensive warfare form should only be used by market leaders. Entities that possess such strong positions should not, however, enter hold-and-maintain mode. Instead, they should seek continuous improvement by attacking themselves. This involves the routine introduction of new and enhanced offerings that render the existing products obsolete. Such offerings ultimately improve the already positive market positions held by market leaders.

 

Offensive warfare should be used by those entities falling just behind market leaders. These entities must target leaders, seeking to shift market share away from their powerful positions, preferably at points of weakness. Here, attacks should be initiated on very narrow fronts, perhaps on single products or small groups of offerings rather than entire product lines.

The flanking warfare strategy is useful for any entity seeking to gain market share. This strategy involves the identification and occupation of new market segments. Although difficult to discover and develop, new segments offer open, uncontested terrain for flankers to occupy. The success of a flanking attack is largely related to the degree of surprise achieved. The elements of surprise provide valuable time for flankers to establish beachheads within these new segments, making competitive responses much more difficult or even impossible.

 

Guerrilla warfare is most appropriately used by smaller entities competing in a market of larger competitors. These smaller entities do not possess the resources to compare directly with market leaders. Instead, they must identify small market segments where they can maintain leadership positions.

 

Next slide.

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