Case Study of Canadian Blood Services
Is concerned about their ability to supply the growing demand for blood products.
The demand Is Increasing at a rate of two percent a year which Is twice as fast as population growth. The Increased demand Is driven by an aging population that is effectively reducing donations while increasing the need for blood products. The nature of the demand is such that it can be unpredictable and the product has a short lifespan. CBS must devise a marketing plan to increase the number of donors, improve retention and their ability to ramp up donors quickly on worth notice.
Analysis In order to develop a suitable strategy to improve donor levels and retention, markets segments were analyzed and the following conclusions have been made.
The main segments to focus on are: Regular Donors – this group of people are regular donors, they tend to continue to donating for humanitarian reasons and because It has become a way of life Past Donors who have stopped – this group has donated before but may have stopped due to life circumstances or an undesirable experience New Donors – this group of people have not yet donated.
They may be facing personal, psychological and hysterical barriers. It will be important to recruit new donors as a large portion of the population is aging so new donors will need to backfill ones that can no longer donate Other important segments to consider are the following: Although demographics were not found to be a particularly good segmenting variable for donors, the largest demographic group of new donors was the 17-24 age groups.
With a large portion of the population in higher age brackets, it will be necessary to fled adequate ways to increase awareness In the younger age groups to keep up with the growing demand. When examining donor motivation the most prominent dimension was humanitarian reasons. This group of people Is motivated for reasons such as having known someone who required blood, enjoyment from donating to their community and to people who generally want to make the world a better place.
Another prominent motivator is self-fulfillment.
This group of people views the donation process as s social activity, they are proud to be a donor and thrive on the feeling they get from donating. Using the Five Stage model of the buyer decision process, there are several stages elevate to the donor decision process: Problem Recognition – the donor process starts by communicating the need for blood products to the general public and past donors. Potential donors must understand why blood products are required, the factors causing the Increased demand and why It should be Important to them In order for them to consider donating.
Information Search – consumers will Inevitably research ten Notation process. I nee wall De looking Tort Integration to Nell overcome personal, psychological and physical barriers.
Potential donors may be concerned bout the amount the time commitment required, the distance they need to travel and fears about needles. Purchase Decision – first time donors often report they were influenced by peers, family or colleagues from work. This demonstrates many donors are motivated to comply with other people’s wishes.
Postprocessor Behavior – retention of donors is extremely important and crucial to maintain supply of blood products. It is often easier to retain a donor than it is to find a new one; therefore donor satisfaction is crucial to keep them coming back and spreading the word to there on the importance and ease of donating. In 2011, blood collection was approximately 900, 000 units with approximately 400,000 donors supplying the blood.
This suggests that if every donor made 3 donations a year that we would have more than enough supply.
This is an aspect to consider whether to focus on recruiting new donors or retaining existing donors because general it is easier and less expensive to retain a customer than to recruit a new one. Recommendations and Implementation To keep up with the growing demand, CBS should heavily focus their efforts on recruitment of existing donors. They should focus on making the process as enjoyable as possible and collect feedback after donation on donor satisfaction to be used for continuous improvement of the process.
They should also continue to use advertising for new donors; however, their efforts should move away from using mainly humanitarian themes and use more of a “it’s easy and convenient to do” theme. The marketing activity should continue to use some traditional media sources, which remain effective, but also incorporate digital streams such as social media to attract and engage the younger generations.
Specifically CBS should: 1 . CBS should spend substantial amount of time ensuring the process for donating is easy and enjoyable.
Customer service should be high priority and customer feedback post donation should be collected and used to improve the process. Smaller satellite locations should also be considered to decrease the distance a donor must travel to donate. 2.
Focus marketing activities around creating awareness on how easy and convenient it is to donate. A large portion of donors claim they donate for humanitarian reasons; therefore, we can move away from this to a certain degree ND start focusing on a segment that needs to be convinced of the process. . Donor testimonials, which can be incorporated into the marketing campaign, should be used to communicate and ease concerns for potential donors. 4. Traditional media such as TV and newspaper should continue to be used; however, some of the advertising budget should be spent on online advertising.
In particular, social media such as Twitter and Backbone should be used in great lengths to attract the younger generation and quickly spread the message of awareness and urgency when supply is low.
