Strategic Management Week 2 Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Strategic Management Week 2 - Assignment Example Constantly, industry players are putting in place marketing policies and strategies that aim at making them the preferred options of customers. As a result of this, the use of competitive advantage has become a very importance concept in the health care sector (Shaw and Kenny, 2007). This notwithstanding, Porter and Teisberg (2004) do not seem pleased with the current state of competition. Reading through the article of Porter and Teisberg (2004), there is so much that can be agreed with the two authors. This is because in a study by Department of Health (2006), it was noted that most of the forms of growths that are experienced in the healthcare sector due to the competition are those that bring personal gain to investors. What this means is that the current state of competition has focused on profit making for business owners, leaving out the core needs and expected improvement that the patient is expected to receive. The call for a redefinition of competition in the healthcare sector will therefore be agreed with. It is high time industry players started focusing their competition on who brings value to the customer. Unfortunately, the customer does not always have the luxury of choosing to do business with a healthcare provider who guarantees value. This is because of how critical some health conditions can be (Ginter, Duncan and Swayne, 2013). This means that the service providers must take up this task of redefining their competition. The cost of health care plays very important role in determining the kind of service outcome that will be received from service delivery (Harris & Lenox, 2013). From a much generalised perspective, Shaw and Kenny (2007) argued that once the cost of healthcare goes up the quality of service delivery must also go up. This is because the inputs of healthcare that make them quality are facilitated with high capital expenditure. From the article that Kaplan and Porter (2011) present however, one would realise that there is