Competitive Effectiveness Wound Care Spring 2020

Category Analysis

Bring yourself up to speed by starting with a market or industry report.  These secondary research tools define categories (sometimes not precisely as you would wish), estimate market size and growth potential, describe the competitive forces impacting the industry and identify key players. 

Don't forget to take advantage of the links to trade news and associations to learn about the most recent developments.

Search a variety of terms such as "wound care", "infection prevention", "medical dressings" and "medical adhesives"

Category Update

Update industry reports by browsing and searching trade journals and association web sites.  These sources discuss latest trends, news about regulatory developments and hot topics.

General business article databases such as ABI Inform and Business Source Premier bring together relevant articles from a wide range of trade journals.

Understanding Wound Care

Cultivating an evidence based understanding of wound care and infection is essential to designing a value based marketing solution.  You do not need a medical degree to do this but you do need to rely on medical evidence and not just questionable consumer health web sites.  The following list of medical databases offer access to quality health care information.

Competitor Analysis

The first step in the competitor analysis is to choose relevant competitors.  The industry reports, news you've gathered in the category analysis and the case itself should provide insight into firms competing in your defined market. 

Once you have identified potential competitors reading company profiles and reports (see the list of databases below) will be helpful. 

Of course you'll scour your competitors web sites, but don't neglect looking over 10K's or annual reports for public companies. 

Note that reports and data on private companies may be sparse, so you may need to rely on news and an analysis of their web sites. 

Just as you updated industry reports with news, do so for the competitor analysis.

Customer Analysis

In a business to business or business to professional marketing plan, customer analysis will rely more on learning about how many down stream demand industries and firms are operating and how they acquire their supplies.  Unlike in consumer marketing, the library will not have access to relevant subscribed consumer surveys.

Use industry reports and statistical search engines and sources listed below to find out how many hospital, ambulatory care and physicians are in operation.  You may also want to search industry reports for "medical supply wholesaling"

HEALTH CARE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT: ELEMENTS, OPERATIONS, AND STRATEGIES.  

HEALTH CARE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

American Hosptial Association web site

Marketing Plan

Crafting a marketing plan is primarily a creative project.  Nonetheless, expect to be able to defend your marketing recommendations by referring to studies and cases evaluating similar techniques.  You can find "how to", practitioner advice and rigorous research on marketing topics in books and articles discoverable in the following databases.