Discussion: Market Segments of Healthcare

Question Description
Market segments help organizations determine how to appropriately market products and services to consumers. For example, consider baby aspirin. This product is used by pediatric patients for pain relief and by older adults for the prevention of heart conditions. The plan for marketing baby aspirin would vary depending on the market segment, particularly in relation to communication techniques. Techniques used with parents of young pediatric patients would likely differ from those used with older adults. Communication, whether written or oral, is a key element of marketing. For this Discussion, you examine the impact of market segments on health care marketing.

To prepare:

Scan current health care delivery systems in your local community and select a health care organization. Consider that you have been hired by this organization’s board of directors to develop a new segmentation service.
Identify market-based segments of the health care organization you selected.
Note: For this Discussion, you are required to complete your initial post before you will be able to view and respond to your colleagues’ postings. Begin by selecting the “Post to Discussion” link and then select “Create Thread” to complete your initial post. Remember, once you click submit, you cannot delete or edit your own posts, and cannot post anonymously. Please check your post carefully before clicking Submit!
Post an executive summary that addresses the following:

Describe market-based segments of the health care organization you selected. Include demographic characteristics of segmented consumers that influence buying behaviors of the market. Then, analyze how the organization is responding to these market segments. Finally, evaluate the impact of these market segments and consumers on the future of the organization’s market. Support your response by identifying and explaining key points and/or examples presented in the Learning Resources.

Note: Your executive summary should be no more than 600 words. Be sure to apply best practices of business communication when writing your executive summary.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.