Supervisor

MMBA 6530 – Week 1 Discussion

The company I am working at is a one of the biggest community hospitals in Massachusetts which got merged with a much bigger hospital in 2012, forming a hospital system. Following the approval of the merger is the branding and aggressive marketing initiated by the Marketing Department which is under the supervision of the Vice President for Business development. Unfortunately, I was unable to conduct an interview to learn the organization’s marketing plan and strategy. My presentation below is purely based on my findings and understanding of the various resources.

What are the elements in the plan?

Marketing plan is defined as “the written document that businesses develop to record the output of the marketing process” (Dibb, 2002). It describes the organization’s market share and its competitors, and outlines the steps to be undertaken to achieve the business competitive advantage. The plan contains eight elements as emphasized by Mackie (n.d.) such as executive summary, situation analysis, opportunity and issues analysis, objectives, marketing strategy, action programs, research and financials.

The executive summary contains the overview and key points of the plan. The situation analysis looks into the business environment with a thorough review of the 5 C’s: context, company, customers, competitors and, collaborators (Mackey, n.d.). The opportunity and issues analysis reviews the strengths and weaknesses of the competitors and how the organization can “compare and elaborate its opportunities and threats” (Lerch, 2007). After the issues are identified, the next step is to develop objectives such as financial and marketing objectives. To achieve the objects, marketing strategy has to be instituted that includes “segmentation, targeting, differentiation and positioning” (Mackie, n.d.). Marketing strategy is followed by the development of action programs that layout the detailed description of the “product design,...