The third types of user or market are the practitioners themselves. Most of the users who are afraid of inserting the catheter themselves for the first time go to practitioners in order to ask for assistance. Thus these practitioners must also be reached and educated about the benefits and quality of the product so that their patients can return home satisfied.
These practitioners also prescribe specific catheters to their customers as well because they have the power too advise the best option to their customers unlike the doctors at the hospital who only prescribe the medicine and then people go to a pharmacy to buy those medicines for themselves (Clarson, 2002). Last but not the least; the end users are a very important market themselves because after all, the whole marketing plan revolves around them.
The only difference is that in developed countries like EU and US, patients and users cannot just go to a pharmacy and buy these equipment themselves without a proper prescription from the doctor, thus this product cannot be sold to them directly. However, the company can target these consumers by educating them through seminars, workshops and advertisements that are aimed towards telling them the benefits of hydrophilic intermittent catheters. Marketing through advertisement on television, magazines and internet can prove to be beneficial for the company in order to create awareness amongst the end users.
Until and unless they know about the benefits of this product, they will treat it as a normal catheter when exposed to a variety of catheters placed at a pharmacy. Competitors and Substitutes As it has been discussed earlier in the report that the medical equipment industry is quite competitive and thus this company also faces a lot of competition from its competitors. The major reason being the lowering of cost of entering the business as the number of firms in the market increases.
The cost for research and development decreases, acquiring technology and machinery becomes easy and the support of government for the production of more and more better quality medical equipment has encouraged many companies to enter the industry. Although the company still enjoys the status of a market leader in the industry since it first invented hydrophilic intermittent catheters in 1983, however, competitors are marketing a number of other substitutes that are available in the market.
These substitutes are cheaper in the sense that no matter they are improved but the basic technology that is used is old. These competitors do not need to incur costs on developing or innovating new technology and they just make do with a little bit improvement in the design and quality of the other types of catheters and then start to market it massively. Many of the competitors have also started to market the hydrophilic intermittent catheters as well; however they are not of the same quality as of this company.
Still the competitors are marketing their hydrophilic competitors at lesser costs then the pioneer itself because of the same old reason, no investment in R&D (McDonald, 2007). Although the company has many brand loyal customers today who only buy Astra Tech Catheters, however, once the other companies specialize in quality of these catheters, the market leadership of Astra Tech may face threats because consumers will tend to turn towards low cast high quality products rather then the pioneer brand name.
In order to cater to this company has to bring in its mission in its marketing campaign that they are committed towards constantly supplying improved quality goods to their valued customers in order to keep enhancing their life styles and health facilities. The marketing campaign should specifically outline and highlight the difference in quality, usability and technology that has been used in its products and the other products that are used in the market.
Moreover, it has to come up with a new campaign for its latest improvements in the product in order to create hype in the minds of the customers telling them how comfortable and convenient these hydrophilic catheters are. This campaign will be useful in two ways. First it will refresh the company’s brand in the minds of its existing customers and satisfy to their needs of continuous improvements. Secondly, this activity will also enable the company to attract new customers who will be confused in deciding which catheter to buy and who have lesser knowledge about the benefits and distinguishing features of the catheters (Clarson, 2002).