Consumer Healthcare: The Paradox of Scale and Profitability

It is difficult for consumer medical care to sink, and it is mainly concentrated in the field of mid-to-high-end audiences
.

However, even for mid-to-high-end users, although the proportion is not high, the absolute number is still not small, and the market size can still be expected

The scale problem of consumer medical care is mainly constrained by five factors, among which, the regional and long-term constraints of medical services are the biggest
.

First, the scale development of consumer medical care is obviously affected by the level of local economic development
.

The consumption attribute of consumer medical care is relatively high, and it is mainly self-funded projects.

Second, the brand accumulation of medical services requires a long period of time, and how to balance costs and income becomes the key
.

Due to the limited service radius of medical services, it is necessary to settle and retain customers after the customer acquisition flow in the early stage of opening a new store

Therefore, how to deeply cultivate an area is very critical.
There are two different strategies here.
One is to invest in a small scale in the early stage and establish a brand in 1-2 years, and then deploy in multiple locations in the same area to quickly acquire customers for large-scale development
.

The second is to directly establish a flagship store, which can be a large outpatient department or a hospital

Third, the characteristic of China is that the scale of a single store for consumer medical care is relatively large
.

Compared with the more common one-person doctor clinics in foreign countries, the consumer medical brands in the Chinese market have more complete services, and the teams are larger than those in foreign countries.

Fourth, marketing and administrative costs cannot be shared across regions
.

Due to the obvious regional attributes of medical care, users cannot recognize brands across regions, and there is no unified national recognition for service recognition

Fifth, the contradiction between supply and demand is prominent
.

Although the demand in the consumer medical market is rising rapidly, the medical demand is segmented, some of which are needs that can be created, and the other is just a need for treatment

Therefore, the cross-regional expansion of consumer medical care is subject to the above five factors.
The core of summarizing these five factors is to seek a regional market with continuous revenue growth and to effectively control costs
.

Consumer medical care does not require strong capital investment to generate benign financial returns