POSITIONING AND DIFFERENTIATION PAPER

Positioning and Differentiation Paper

Positioning and Differentiation Paper

Introduction

In health care the competition is huge and many times when a niche market is discovered it is a matter of time before competitors notice and copy, or even improve upon, unique values or advantages, and therefore the advantage is soon lost. Understanding positioning and differentiation is essential to the restaurants success. If one is ignored the others suffer. Each area can be conquered by distinguishing the restaurant in the following ways.

With differentiating the areas that should be considered are features, services, personnel, channel, and image. Features can include things such as quality, performance and design. The area of services might include ordering ease and delivery. With personnel there are many areas that fall under this. A few are competence, courtesy, and responsiveness. In this paper the positioning strategy of two hospitals is going to be discussed.

Shouldice Hospital Limited

Dr. Edward Earle Shouldice graduated from the University of Toronto in 1916. By 1940, Dr. Shouldice was operating a private medical and surgical practice, lecturing at the University of Toronto, and pursuing research work in areas of advancing medical knowledge. During World War II, he was called to serve on the Medical Examining Board. Dr. Shouldice, a major in the army, found that many young men willing to serve their country had to be denied enlistment. These men needed surgical treatment to repair their hernias before they could be pronounced physically fit for military training.

Facts of the Hospital:

Location: The hospital was located in Toronto in the southern part of Canada and 48% of the demand was from northern U.S.

Layout: The Shouldice Hospital has two basic facilities; hospital and the clinic in one building. The rooms are design such that the patients have an opportunity to visit each other and this helped to create a service culture with the help of the people who worked for the Shouldice hospital.

Capacity Planning: Shouldice was constructed with a capacity of 36 beds. After some years passed, they improved the capacity of the hospital to 89 beds.

Service Encounter: There is a sensible service culture in Shouldice. Training in Shouldice technique is important since the procedure could not be varied. The patients, who were experienced hernia operation in Shouldice, can return their normal daily lives much before the other patients that had experienced the similar operation at other hospitals. And the recurrence rate for all operations performed at Shouldice is about 0.

Shouldice's strategic service concept

The patients at the Shouldice center take some of care of themselves. In Shouldice, all the patients were encouraged to walk up and down the halls and to get in dialog with the other patients and the surgeons. In thought of encouraging the patients, the steps between the floors are constructed with a smooth inclination, there are not TV's at the bedrooms and the rooms were designed as if it were a home instead of a hospital. Every square foot of facility is carpeted to reduce the hospital feeling and the possibility of a ...