These four P’s provide a very useful framework for my venture’s market plan. It is a good time to think about them in a comprehensive way.
Product
Physical distinctions
My offer is health insurance for the uninsured. It is an intangible product compared to tangible products such as McDonald’s burgers and Dell’s computers. What defines it is its feature and quality of policies that people can benefit from.
The design of the product requires deep understanding of customers that fall in the market selection. Given the diverse characteristics of my customers and their situation, a customized approach may need to be adopted. However, it means high cost. I need to think about whether I hire medical professionals to do this job, or rely on insurance companies’ services to do this.
Features-types of illness and medical services covered, any constraints on pre-existing conditions, number of household members covered, percentage of claims insured, plan type (HMO, fee per visit, etc.), limitations on hospitals and physicians visited, etc. My envisioned situation would be that people not only get free insurance, but also get the most appropriate plan that fits their situation. The more fit the plan, the less cost it is for them and for other stakeholders.
Performance Quality-the quality of the product depends on whether the features of the plan fit customers.
Conformance Quality and Reliability-I haven’t decided how many partnering insurance companies to work with, or to see how many companies are willing to lower their profit margin and offer plans for poor people. Once the list of partners has been decided, the next thing I need to ensure is that there will not be discrepancies among the plans offered. They should be of similar quality and reliability.
Durability-some of my customers are full-time insured, and some are part-time uninsured during a given year. My product needs to cover their specific needs and I also need to decide a method to ensure that their plans are renewed or discontinued given their situation.
Repairability-the customers’ needs should be reviewed at least annually so that the insurance plans are still a good fit. If circumstance changes, new plans should be offered or discontinued.
Service distinctions
Ordering Ease-the physical distinctions mentioned above and this service all require instant communication with customers. It can be done on the website, the same that the public view and donate money. Given that my customers may not have access to internet, orders can also be made over phone or via mail. In addition, I need to partner with free clinics, safety net, hospitals and all other free medical services that my customers may go to and have an order system available in these places.
Delivery-The customers should be able to track the process of their case on the insurance companies’ website. If not available, such information should be available on my venture’s website through a secured account for each customer.
Customer Training and Consulting-Customers can call to inquire how to use my venture to benefit them, and how to take advantage of the insurance plans.
Place
This is not the place where customers will see the product of insurance plans, but to see what my venture offers. Thus it is the same as the promotion channels for my venture. Place should be where customers go to use free medical services. I followed the Many Paths to the Customer graph to draw mine place.
Price
In my case, price is not set for my customers, i.e. the uninsured. Rather, it is the pricing for insurance companies. I should ask myself these questions.
• What price level I can get to ensure more people covered by my venture?
• How much a percentage should I get from these companies in return to cover my venture’s operations?
• For donors, shall I set different level of donations ($5, $10, $50, etc.)? Will this drive them away or will it increase donations?
• Out of each donation, how much shall I draw to cover the operation?
This depends on a detailed analysis of a budget for my venture month by month and for a fiscal year. It also depends on how fast the donations come in and the number of people covered.
Promotion
As a social enterprise, my venture fits more into the not-for-profit type rather than a for-profit type. Thus all promotion methods and fundraising efforts used by not-for-profit are applicable to my venture. First of all, I need to understand clearly what are the most effective promotion methods for organizations, fundraising return ratio for each method, and determine which can be used for my venture. Next, I need to use the Place channels that I identified above and design specific activities to promote my venture.
What are unique promotion methods application for social enterprise? What new technologies can I take advantage? The following articles mention “Think locally”, which is usefuly for my venture.
Here are some very interesting discussions on marketing for social enterprise http://www.socialedge.org/discussions/marketing-communication/marketing-for-community-based-social-enterprise-february-2005/?searchterm=None
Six emerging marekting technologies for social enterprise: (maybe group buying for health insurance?)
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/six-emerging-marketing-technologies-enterpris
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