Akron Children's Hospital Case

Akron Children's Hospital's marketing director Aaron Powell thought that it was important to conduct this study, because other competitive hospitals in the area had hired marketing directors similar to himself, and were consequently intensifying their marketing campaigns in the area, which created an urgency for Akron Children's Hospital to intensify its marketing efforts in order to remain competitive.

The main purpose of the Akron Children's Hospital study was to ascertain the best positioning for this hospital for the upcoming communications campaign, which was intended to increase the number of patients for the hospital by approximately 10% in the next fiscal year. By properly positioning this hospital for the upcoming communications campaign, the marketing director would exponentially increase the probability of this hospital increasing its patient cases by at least the 10% desired.

The key questions that Akron Hospital employees addressed in this case are whether to proceed with plan A, B, C, or D, and would this effort be a worthwhile investment of financial resources. The methods used by Powell and his research team to answer the marketing research questions, were to conduct four focus groups in which participants would discuss their experiences with the hospital, conducting a field survey in order to follow up on the issues that were identified in the focus groups, to ascertain the positioning preference of the focus group respondents, to statistically determine that preference among the positioning alternatives, or to conduct no research and brainstorm if found feasible.

The most important understanding about Akron Children's Hospital as an organization that led the firm to consider the research about its positioning was that this hospital was about the kids, and that everything about this hospital should emphasize the kids. In addition, there were rival hospitals that were engaging