How UnitedHealth Group develops its activities
UnitedHealth Group is a leading health insurance company. The company has around 100 million customers in the US and many other countries. It also ranks first in the world in terms of insurance premiums.
UnitedHealth was formed in 1977 from Charter Med, which was founded in 1974. Charter Med went public on the American Stock Exchange in 1984, and in 1998 the company was reorganised and renamed UnitedHealth. The changes have benefited the company. From around US$12 billion in 1997, it had grown to US$29 billion by 2003.
One of its main activities was the HMO sector, which included providing healthcare services and organising facilities for this purpose. In the 1990s, however, the segment went through a crisis compounded by the company’s internal problems. Management then adopted a new development strategy to increase brand awareness and positioning with the target audience. To achieve this, a series of commercials were launched in 2003 to communicate the importance of NMOs.
The commercials included situations where the characters were in current or future need of healthcare services. With a well-constructed marketing campaign, UnitedHealth was able to change the perception that the healthcare industry was only interested in its own profits and not the well-being of its customers.
UnitedHealth Group marketing strategy
UnitedHealth’s advertising reached a national audience and won an award in 2005 for its contribution to the positioning of the HMO sector. UnitedHealth Group consists of six independent divisions. Ovations, for example, focuses on services for customers over 50. Ingenix provides software for healthcare facilities and physician consulting services, while Uniprise offers administrative services for businesses.
One of the keys to UnitedHealth’s success is a well-developed marketing strategy and careful analysis of its target audience. The company’s specialists have found that in most families, women care for their loved ones by choosing insurance and visiting specialists. In addition, women are more likely to express dissatisfaction with the healthcare system and to select insurance plans for the whole family. For this reason, the company’s promotion targeted women between the ages of 25 and 54. The marketing campaign demonstrated all the benefits of using various insurance programmes aimed at preventing illness by reducing the risk of emergency visits to the doctor.
UnitedHealth employs 300,000 people who provide services across a range of businesses. The company has revenues of more than US$16 billion.
