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Gone are the times when the maxim that ruled the healthcare industry was "Build it and that they will come", under the impression that that if people knew where services were located they might find their thanks to the clinics.
In post liberalisation India the healthcare industry is awakening to the very fact that the buyer has got to be pursued and enticed into visiting healthcare facilities of a specific brand and to shop for healthcare products of a specific brand. With the govt permitting 100 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) within the health care industry, there's a deluge of personal players within the Indian Healthcare market today. And this has dramatically changed the facade of healthcare marketing and communications in India.
Taking the case of hospitals, there's a good sort of services (that aren't just medical) on offer for the patient. From in-house multi cuisine restaurants, swimming pools, walking tracks, indoor games facilities, libraries and play areas to travel desks that arrange sightseeing tours and buying patients, you name it and that they have it, beat a bid to woo more and more patients. Hospital promotions combat the shape of PR , VIP and visitor hospital tours and enter exhibitions, loyalty and outreach programmes, support groups etc.
Similarly the pharmaceutical industry goes overboard in its attempts to appease the 2 routes that they need to succeed in bent the top consumers- doctors and pharmacists. For retailers it's boom time as they get free supplies of medicines, expensive gifts, holiday trips and also huge margins for promoting and selling particular brands at their outlets. With doctors the gifts, incentives and schemes are becoming wilder by the day. The trend is to customize the gift to the doctor in order that the drug company actually meets a relevant need of the doctor instead of flooding him with things that he throws away or hands over to others. Taking samples of customised gifts it might be admission of a doctor’s child to a reputed school or maybe the reimbursement of shopping bills. beat an effort to urge a far better hold on this indirect consumer. For over the counter drugs there are advertisements altogether shapes and sizes visible just anywhere. With sponsoring TV programmes to conducting mass consumer contact programmes to free sampling, pharmaceutical companies try innovative marketing ideas to urge a share of the consumer’s wallet.
One check out the statistics and therefore the reason behind this intense competition gets clear. consistent with a Confederation of Indian Industry — McKinsey study on India’s health industry, the country’s spending on health care is predicted to extend from Rs 86,000 crore at the present to Rs 200,000 crore within the next decade. Health care’s contribution to India’s GDP will increase from the present 5.2 per cent to eight .5 per cent by 2012. The players within the healthcare industry fully realise that these predictions will come true with harnessing the burgeoning purchasing power of the Indian consumer.