Case Study: Unitedhealthcare

Like Finding a NEEDle in a Haystack
UnitedHealth Group is an American diversified managed health care company based in Minnetonka. In 2011, J.D Power and Associate gave UnitedHealthcare the highest employer satisfaction rating for self-insured health plans. I have lots of friends use UnitedHealthcare plan and they said it is the best health plan provider. Thus, I think UnitedHealthcare addresses the core needs to be proposed by Maslow.
My parents have a family health insurance since I was born. Many healthcare company’s marketing for its insurance plan on the idea that their plans are “built for moms and kids”, and it based on needs associated with love/belonging. When people go to UnitedHealthcare website homepage, people can easily click
the family button and find all the family plan’s information there. On their website, they use some photos to reflect that it addresses the need. Those photos show a father or a mother hold on their child, they laugh and their eyes are full of love. In my opinion, these marketing communications reflect the family love between parents and child. Parents can be their target consumer. Lots of moms “under the pressure some advertisers place on them with respect to making good decisions for their family” (Mourey, 59). Parents always think the child is the most important thing in their life, so a child's health is also very important. I think when every parents see those photos on the website will hope their families can be very sweet like them. At the same time, UnitedHealthcare selects parents as their target customers is because parents may want to save money for their family and UnitedHealthcare family plan can do that. UnitedHealthcare offers a wide range of plans for a wide range of needs and budgets. Therefore, it is a good idea to marketing family plan and promote love.
Why we need a healthcare plan?
Safety! People never know when they will need care and health insurance may pay some of the high medical cost. At the same time, healthcare is the best way to “keep themselves and their offspring safe” (Mourey, 57). In my opinion, UnitedHealth’s marketing communications reflect that it addresses the safety need. UnitedHealthcare is good at promote their products through their website. Everything about their plans including both the price and the benefit are in their website. On the home page, they highlight some slogans such as built for a modern high-performing, simpler health care system and built for access to care. In order to draw people’s attention, they also use some pictures to show how they built for a better safety health care. As far as I can see, the original positioning for the first need and newly-proposed positioning based on the second need addresses the different consumer segment. Based on the second need, everyone can be their target customer, not only because it is important for everyone to have a health care plan to protect themselves but also help people live healthier lives. There are many different products and services that UnitedHealthcare provide, so people can choose the best plan for themselves depends on their own potential. For example, if you are a company manager you can find a variety of group coverage options that UnitedHealthcare have insurance plans that work for companies of all size. Back to what I just talk about these two needs address the different consumer segment because if you have children, you can choose from a variety of supplemental plans that help with health care service include in your family. In other words, parents are the consumer segment for first needs, but parents also address the second needs. I think the consumer segment of second needs range over a wide field including the parents, while the first need’s consumer segment is a specific range which is parents. Therefore, it is
a good idea to divide their insurance plan into some specific areas that can give an intended target to promote.