As an international healthcare institute, we are trying to expand our company by increasing international sales revenue by 100 percent in the next 5 years. In order to attain this goal, we need to do a significant amount of marketing research and collect both secondary and primary data. We need to do a situational analysis and understand our foreign competitors and customers. As a company, we need to determine patient demographics in our target countries. We need to capitalize on our competitive advantages such as knowledgeable doctors, high industry experience and quality healthcare in order to differentiate ourselves from competition. We need figure out what environmental adaptions must be made in order for international patients to feel comfortable at the Mayo Clinic. We need to address the specific needs of our international customers and determine what their countries health centers are lacking. The management decision is to attract more patients internationally. We need to figure out what potential patients like about their current healthcare centers and what is holding them back from perusing treatment in the United States.
Mayo Clinic has to decide which countries to target and then has to match our strengths, products and philosophies to each country individually. We need to analyze and screen countries to get rid of the ones that do not fit our marketing objectives or do not have the current economic standing to be a target. We need to gather secondary data by analyzing healthcare centers published annual reports in our target countries. We have to fine tune our internal data systems so we can determine the number of patients and the revenue figures each health center has each quarter. Once we obtain these numbers we can decide which areas are best fit to advertise Mayo Clinic. We need to see how many people visit the centers and we also need household-level data to track the patient’s brand switching behavior. Having the household level data will help us to figure out if patients in that particular area are satisfied with their healthcare or if they are switching back and forth between centers.
This will show us how satisfied the patients are with the care they currently have. After the secondary data is collected, we need to gather quantitative and qualitative primary data. The best sources of primary data for Mayo Clinic are surveys and projective techniques. Surveys are one of the methods we should use because we need to determine the attitudes of patients toward their current health center and toward healthcare in America by asking them their opinions. Surveys are easy to quantify and analyze. We have to pick one of the 4 survey methods, mail, phone, web or personal interviews, depending on the countries dynamics.
Some countries may be more skeptical about phone surveys while others may not use the web as often. We need to be sensitive towards these cultural differences. Online surveys are the best method because they are anonymous and fast, but again, it depends on the country being surveyed. Projective techniques will help us get answers from patients that they may not be willing to answer accurately on a survey or in person. Sentence completion allows them to tell us their true feelings toward their countries healthcare without having to feel like they need to hide anything. We have a lot of work ahead of us and I hope everyone is ready to take on the challenge to help the Mayo Clinic grow to be the best in the world.
