Marketing Trends: What Affects the Marketing Environment?

¶ … Marketing Environment Products posses a limited lifespan that comprises of four distinct stages of development with each of the development stages presenting its own unique opportunities as well as constraints. This is what is termed as the product life cycle which will be discussed with examples from the healthcare industry.

This involves the initial presentation of a particular product into the market.at this stage the sales of the product start growing slowly as the public gets to know of the product that has been newly introduced to them.in the case of healthcare industry this is the stage where the product appears in hospitals, drug stores and people start seeing advertisements either in televisions or print (Suttle, 2009).

Growth phase This is the stage where sales and profits of the new product start rising.in this stage the price of the product will remain same in order for maximum profits to be realized.it is also at this stage that the distribution of the product is expanded and the quality of the product maintained.in the healthcare industry this stage will involve a new drug being distributed over a wider area and its price remaining constant (Suttle, 2009).

Maturity stage With success there comes competition and at this stage other companies begin introducing a similar product particularly if the product has been highly successful. This will lead to the demand of the product and its competitors peaking at a particular point.

The sales begin to go down leading to the lowering of prices by some companies so as to get customers.an example in the healthcare industry occurs when there is a flood of generic antibiotics of a certain infection after a single company was the first to come up with that antibiotic ( Suttle, 2009). Decline stage At this stage the demand of the product eventually diminishes due to the introduction of other technologies.

This will leave the company with two options either to maintain the product and sell it at very low process or discontinue the product (Suttle, 2009). Vertical marketing systems can be defined as channels in which the intermediaries are integrated so their functions are performed at the most efficient place within the channel. There are three common vertical marketing systems which are; corporate, contractual and administered.

Corporate system This system streamlines the process through bringing all elements of the channel of distribution from the point of manufacturing to the store under the ownership of one business. Contractual system Under this system, the different pieces of channels of distribution continue their operation as individual entities. Businesses go into contractual relationships together with other distribution elements in the channel with each of their duties and benefits pointed out before anything. Administered system These systems use neither formal contractual nor corporate ownership of the channel of distribution.

Here, one member of the distribution channel collects enough power through sheer size in order to effectively control the other activities that are carried out by other channels of distribution (Dontigney, 2006). Although advertising has become more common in health care, it is still a tactic that generates concern and criticism. The Alliance for Health Care Strategy and Marketing developed a set of voluntary guidelines regarding the concerns and issues that should be considered in health care advertising.

There are several guidelines for Health Care Advertising; Information that can be disclosed in an advertisement includes; general information of a healthcare facility such as its name, location, contacts, facilities and accommodation provided, and charges. The professional services that are available in the healthcare facility can also be disclosed. Accreditation or award announcement such as recognized certification that the healthcare facility has.