When referring to US healthcare equipment systems industry, substitute products can be emanated from cross-border healthcare services, natural/ traditional/ alternative medicines and indulging to healthy lifestyle. With these, healthcare customers would avoid direct contact with medical equipment and systems. The cost of hospitalization is higher than these alternatives except for cross-border services option but this is rarely preferred for some financial and cultural reasons.
With reference to the hospitals that are the immediate customers of the industry, the data from saturated market of GEMS showed that most of these hospitals value medical equipment and systems. In effect, threat of substitute products is generally low because of high differentiation of healthcare services from other industries. To provide quality healthcare service, industry players must acquire, use and specialize in medical equipments, systems and technological breakthroughs. This will also increase their efficiency and customer satisfaction that are expected to the public service-centered industry.
Buyer Power (Low) There are minimal possibilities that there are few customers that have significant market share because AHA members were numbered as high as 5,000. With the exclusion of independent and smaller hospitals such as clinics, customers are diverse and the software-based sector has yet to saturate the US market. Although products of the industry were standardized because of high systems control from government and international bodies to assure quality, equipments required technological change from one period to another which reshapes standard equipments into differentiated after-sales services.
Due to high focus of doctors and other hospital employees to their work, backward integration is weak in the industry. Players have also independence to customers from creating distribution channels because the number of potential customers is relatively small compared to regular market consumers. As shown in the ability of GEMS to convert free mindset into fee services, buyers do not have significant influence in pricing. Lastly, since customers preferred long-term relationship with suppliers, players can be critical partners to the latter value chain.
Supplier Power (Low) Forward integration of suppliers of large players such as GEMS may not be possible due to the former lack of knowledge and relationships to the healthcare industry. Supplier’s knowledge in design and production also has a crucial lacking such as knowledge of market preference on convenience, style and familiarity to after-sales support. The medical systems industry is a whole new industry when suppliers try to compete outside their manufacturing sites.
Supplier’s power was also reduced when the importance of medical equipment were fragmented by the newer software-based sector. Players such as GEMS are not to rely heavily to one supplier. The key aspect of customer-oriented approach also may not be duplicated by suppliers because their traditional focus is on economies of scale and mass production. However, the technological capacities and necessary value-added services like customer training in GEMS Training in Partnership (TIP) program was not on their normal strategy and operation.