HA575 Unit 4: Healthcare Marketing Analysis of UNH, CVS, and Cigna

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the healthcare marketing strategies of three major organizations: UnitedHealth Group (UNH), CVS Health Corp, and Cigna Corporation. The report begins with an overview of each company, highlighting their key products, services, and market positions. It then delves into the 5 Ps of marketing (Product, Price, Place, Promotion, and People) for each company, examining their respective approaches to each element. Furthermore, the report employs a SWOT analysis to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats faced by each organization. By analyzing these factors, the report aims to assess and compare the marketing potential of each healthcare system, ultimately predicting which one demonstrates the most promising prospects based on evidence-based research and scholarly articles, as required by the assignment brief for HA575 Healthcare Marketing Unit 4.

Running head: HEALTHCARE MARKETING 1
Healthcare Marketing
Name
Institutional Affiliation

HEALTHCARE MARKETING 2
UNITEDHEALTH GROUP INC. (UNH):
Overview
It is the biggest health care services organization in the globe, and serves more than 50M
people in the US as of late 2018 and 5M people in Brazil. UNH provides a broad range of
healthcare products alongside services that include HMOs; PPO; POS; and managed free-for-
service programs.
FIVE PS
Product: It offers products via 2 platforms of business to serving 70M customers in the
US. UnitedHealthcare is a Health Benefits platform serving an array of marketplaces in distinct
geographic areas/regions. It provides a broad range of health benefit commodities to people,
employees, and families alongside customers. It offers health coverage, vision and dental
coverage, Medicaid and Medicare schemes, global solutions to health, value-focused care as part
of its product strategy part of marketing mix. Optum is a novel arrival to this Group and it is a
Health Services platform focusing on enhancing healthcare system and offers software and info
items. It offers population-health-management, BPO service and advisory consulting facilities to
clients. It remains a digital branch which offers soft-wares for health monitoring (Kemp, Bui,
Krishen, Homer & LaTour, 2017).
Price: The Group offers an array of service with varying prices for health care products
or coverage provided by the group. Price schemes stay independent upon coverage type
approved by clients. Clienteles vary from people to family, physicians, brokers and employers.
The Group envisions to decrease health benefits costs. It has GHP; PHC and MHC in the US.
Place: The Group is in the US and is serving key market segments and in various
locations. It provides Medicaid beneficiaries’ services into distinct twenty-four states of US. It

HEALTHCARE MARKETING 3
targets global marketplace as it is yet to penetrate other economies as in the US.
UnitedHealthcare global is reaching to Brazilian, UK, Portuguese and India markets.
Promotion: The Group’s has a digital existence in social sites accounts via Twitter,
Facebook, YouTube, RSS, and LinkedIn. It has a broad array of services like Virtual Visits,
Rally, 24-Hour Nurse, and estimator of cost. These tools for innovation help manage clams, track
expenses, record as well as store health info of families in secure manner. It promotes products
via Internet websites, TV ads, print ads in newspaper and magazine. Business Wire provides the
mobile alerts for the Group. Its philanthropic CSR initiatives provide answers to tenacious
encounters in health. Its clienteles help societies via voluntary and contribution of financial aids
and time all year round. The Group’s “CelebrateOne” Foundation Program concentrating on
lowering IMR.
People: The Group offers healthcare solutions to nearly 70M individuals in the US. It has
200,000 employees in total serving in the healthcare market. Almost 65M individual s benefit
from pharmacy care services offer in OptumRx platform.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
 Strong presence in US
 Quality sales persons
 Best philanthropic CSR efforts
Weaknesses
 Inability to charge high prices
Threats
 Competition from rivals firms
including CVs and Cigna Corporation
Opportunities
 Opportunities to enter new overseas
markets

HEALTHCARE MARKETING 4

CVS HEALTH CORP:
Overview
CVS joined the ranks of the global largest health care concerns with its 2018 merger with
the Aetna, Inc., health insurer. This deal allows the newly merged organization to provide a wide
array of traditional, voluntary, and consumer-oriented health insurance products and associated
services. The healthcare segment of Aetna offers POS, HMOs, PPOs alongside indemnity
benefits products to about 40M members as of late 2018.
FIVE PS
Product: It is a pharmacy and medical service organization. Its product line remains all-
everyday usage customer items primarily comprising of pharmacy commodities. Its pharmacy
exponential growth is premised on the US booming healthcare sector. It is largest health-clinic
chain alongside prescription drugs’ provider. It offers an array of services and products that
assist in providing quality health services affordably. It has nearly 900 stores globally packed
with pharmacists prescribing affordable drugs besides aiding patients’ recovery at reduced
prices. It has a strong network in its clinic retail sector of eleven-thousand Minute-clinics with
medical providers alongside nurses assisting individuals with slight surgeries, glitches, testing
and screening. They further monitor diseases and guidance services to individuals. They offer
services of infusion and has a nearly 14,000 annual patient’s network. The eight-five centers for
infusion host biggest network in United States. It has such a deep stronghold due to its mergers
and acquisitions. It provides elderly’s home-services to create a longstanding care services. It
purposes to offer healthcare services at reduced costs, quality as well as convenience.

HEALTHCARE MARKETING 5
Price: It utilizes a range of tools for management pricing to reduce prices in its marketing
mix and hence pose a big challenge to rivals. It uses three distinct kinds of value-oriented models
including indication-centric formulary, indication-centric pricing and outcome-centric pricing.
Place: It has more than 9600 store locations with a large network of 2700 retail
pharmacists alongside 73,000 pharmacy technicians on the toes to offer services to clients in
need. It has eighteen major distribution center s placed strategically in the US providing products
through huge truck services fleet thus keeping shelves crammed with quality items frequently.
Fleet is large is number amounting to nearly three-hundred owned tractors, fifteen-hundred
private trailers as well as third-party logistics assistance of almost eleven-hundred vehicles.
Promotion: It has a huge brand reputation in United States hence marketing and image-
branding is a big duty. CVS is recognized for reasonable pricing and costing. It has individuals’
goodwill as it halted tobacco products’ sales because it triggers significant damage to people
health and it cannot be offered in stores of healthcare. This assisted CVS greatly to enhance its
brand reputation and create a spotless answerable healthcare brand.
People: It has many salespersons, staff, and managers, alongside pharmaceuticals that
forms a large organization. It employs nearly 250,000 employees in the US. It has a total of
36,000 pharmacists alongside clinicians. It is critical to rare illness and has hired nearly 250
committed nurses to deal with it.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
 Uses a range of prices
 Serves many locations
 Large number of employees
Weaknesses
 More money spent on promotion
 Charging less price

HEALTHCARE MARKETING 6
 Huge brand image
 Affordable pricing
 Best pricing management tools
Threats
 Fierce competition from rivals
 Increasing costs of ads
Opportunities
 Use of online marketing
 Use of social media
 Enter new global markets
CIGNA CORPORATION:
Overview
The Cigna Corp is amongst the biggest investor-owned worker benefits organization in
the United States. It provides POS, PPOs, and HMOs to millions of clients across the sixteen
states. It is amongst the market leaders in commercial independently funded fee market that is
where much growth shall arise for the big-group insurance segment. In 2018 (December), Cigna
finished the Express Scripts Holding Company’s acquisition, the biggest United States pharmacy
benefits manager, which offers prescription services through market as well as home delivery.
FIVE PS
Product: It sells products using five wide categories with each serving unique product
lines. All products get sold under “Cigna Corporation” as brand name. It sells products with
varieties allowing customers to choose product of their own choosing (Hahn, Slager & Harris,
2014). It is selling extremely differentiated commodities with many attributes accessible to
clients which rivals do not offer. Products are hence considered as exclusive. Products remain
perceived as upper quality than rivals hence clients are willing to purchase at extra prices (Merz,

HEALTHCARE MARKETING 7
2015). It sells products which are popular for its traditional designs which is further practical for
client to use.
Price: Pricing strategy is a competitive-based because data on rivals is available easily as
a result of a big number of rivals existing in this industry. It considers costs when setting prices
for some products for which info is unavailable on rivals or costlier to produce. It sells products
at higher prices than rivals because it provides additional features and high price offsets such. It
uses product bundle pricing when products get bundled together and sold at lower prices than
individual items’ total (Hyder & Fregidou-Malama, 2018).
Place: It sells products via 2 channels of marketing. It is selling straight to clients via
virtual website and indirectly to wholesalers who sells to retailers located in the United States. Its
products are present in more than 500 retailers in the entire the US. It adheres to intensive
marketing strategy whereby it attempts to encompass its products on as several retailers as
feasible. This makes sure that it products remain available to clients easily in various parts of the
nation.
Promotion: It utilizes multiple media channels to promote products. It utilizes traditional
media including advertisement on radio and TVs. This is effective in reaching huge customers
and has ability to appeal to many people. It also uses social media and online advertising that is
cheaper and effective because of rising internet usage. It advertises on YouTube, Facebook, and
Twitter because if high usage (Fortenberry Jr & McGoldrick, 2016).
People: It has people who work in sales team and playing a key part in efforts of
marketing. They are trained in persuasive technique and show respect to business clients
considering their preferences. It has people who work in department of customer-service who are
reached out to by clients with issues related to product. The sales team guides clients to solve

HEALTHCARE MARKETING 8
the issues. It has people who work with suppliers to acquire raw materials and they play key role
in maintaining and improving final product quality. It has people who work in retail stores and
they help clients on site by responding to all questions and assisting them describe products
which best suits their respective needs.
SWOT ANALYSIS
Strengths
 Ability to charge high prices
 Presence across the US
Weaknesses
 Weak online marketing
 Lack of retail stores
Threats
 Fierce competition from rivals as CVS
and UNH
Opportunities
 Open retails stores
 Train its sales persons
References
Fortenberry Jr, J. L., & McGoldrick, P. J. (2016). Internal marketing: A pathway for healthcare
facilities to improve the patient experience. International Journal of Healthcare
Management, 9(1), 28-33.
Hahn, C., Slager, D., & Harris, K. (2014). U.S. Patent No. 8,874,460. Washington, DC: U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office.

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Hyder, A. S., & Fregidou-Malama, M. (2018). Is context important in healthcare marketing?: A
comparison between developed and emerging markets. In Networks in Context, The 8th
meeting of the IMP Group in Asia and 34th meeting of IMP Group, Jetwing Blue,
Negombo Beach, Sri Lanka, 2nd-5th December 2018. (pp. 17-17). Industrial Marketing
and Purchasing Group.
Kemp, E., Bui, M., Krishen, A., Homer, P. M., & LaTour, M. S. (2017). Understanding the
power of hope and empathy in healthcare marketing. Journal of Consumer
Marketing, 34(2), 85-95.
Merz, M. Y. (2015). Message Framing in Healthcare Marketing. In Ideas in Marketing: Finding
the New and Polishing the Old (pp. 691-691). Springer, Cham.