July 23, 2009

Packaging Your Clinics for Convenience

Wayne Glowac

You know them. You’ve seen them. Maybe you’ve even jokingly referred to them as “Doc In the Boxes.”

While it remains to be seen whether retail clinics will affect healthcare in America as profoundly as fast food restaurants have shaped our dining habits, their emergence reveals a key consumer interest health care marketers must address.

Convenience.

Keep in mind that convenience is a tricky thing, and some consumers make purchases just because they seem handy. Pre-packaged servings of cold cuts and crackers aren’t much easier to use than buying the items separately, and they’re probably more expensive, too.

Just the same, people buy them, which just goes to show that convenience is in the mental clock of the consumer.

Since we predict that consumer choices will have a greater and greater impact on health care organizations in the U.S., it’s important to make sure accessing your organization doesn’t get labeled as “inconvenient.”

It doesn’t matter if your facility’s waiting times are shorter than a retail clinic’s. If consumers think it takes longer at your place, you have an issue.

What are you doing to affect the way your target market thinks about the convenience of your clinics?

RT @wavedriven what are you doing to make sure your patients see you as "convenient?"

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