Abstract

Be Well Hospitals - a multi-specialty secondary healthcare chain of hospitals is set up in the suburbs, industrial towns and district headquarters of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The hospital chain co-founded by Dr. C.J.Vetrievel in 2011, fulfills the need of quality healthcare services in secondary healthcare market segment. They provide access to high-quality primary and secondary healthcare services at affordable price to the semi-urban and rural population through their chain of multi-specialty hospitals. In the four and half years, since its founding, Be Well has set up eight hospitals with a combined capacity of more than 280 beds and has treated close to 500,000 patients.
The case describes Be Well's operations and the marketing initiatives it deployed to increase the adoption of its service concept in a two -tiered market. it provides information about the content of Be Well's past advertising communications and the media choices it made to build its brand.
The management is grappling with the dilemma of brand building and educating potential customers about the high quality of care available at Be Well in a format that had a smaller footprint than its big city rivals. A complicating factor is creating a three-tier market with the limited resources in a setting where the customers are used to a two-tier service structure. They face a resource allocation challenge with regard to the mix of media-based and non-media based communication platforms.
The management needs to decided on the choice of service attributes or dimensions around which the Be Well brand to be built and whether to focus on local branding of each hospital or develop a unified and common brand across all its facilities in the state.

Learning Objectives

Understanding consumer's decision process to choose between private versus public healthcare institutions and among primary, secondary and tertiary institutions; Challenge of building a pioneering brand by a private enterprise in the secondary healthcare category;Choosing the appropriate marketing mix and operational instruments to be build the category and position the brand; Challenges of sustaining a pioneering brand over the long run in the face of the competition from tertiary care centers.