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OK, your small business wants to outshine the competition. Start by surprising your customers with some inexpensive but delightful surprises.

Customer Respite means c

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

reating either a physical space for the customer to relax, or at a minimum making the environment inside your store less rushed so they can mentally relax.

Surprise Upgrad

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

e is creating a pleasant and unexpected reward for your customer. Classic rewards-driven marketing tells us that the primary way to upgrade or reward customers is to tie t

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

he upgrade to a purchase. The simple but effective punch-card at the corner donut shop or coffee house is the most common means for small business to achieve this. This is an

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

effective and cheap way to build some customer loyalty.

But you can also upgrade customers randomly. If done consistently, a high percentage of your good customers wil

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

l experience these upgrades. The overall impression of your business as a company that cares will increase both among the current customer base and the new customers who visit

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

your shop.

The first thing to do is brainstorm a mix of both Customer Respite Areas and Surprise Upgrades. Here are five examples from various businesses:

Type o

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

f Business: Home-based Daycare.
Customer Respite Idea: Serve a cup of hot chocolate in a to-go cup once a week during the winter when parents pick up their ki

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

ds. Inexpensive, plus it’s a very much welcome treat on a cold day.

Type of Business: Retail Maternity Store in a mall.
Customer Respite Idea: Once a week

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

order cookies in the afternoon and hand out a couple to all moms-to-be that browse the store.

Type of Business: Convenience Store.
Surprise Upgrade Idea: O

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

nce a year, in the middle of winter, throw a “spring breeze” day where all gas purchases (not just the fill-ups, but all purchases) receive a free hanging car deodorizer.

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

Type of Business: Shoe Repair Store with sidewalk frontage.
Customer Respite Idea: Place one small wooden bench in front of store, close by the door--in the mo

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

st shaded spot, if possible.

Type of Business: Dry Cleaners.
Surprise Upgrade Idea: Once a month just as a surprise pass out a coupon for one free dry-clea

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

ning of a blouse or shirt. Nothing fancy--and the customers don’t have to do anything to “earn” the coupon.

Another idea for any business is to add some easy listening music

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

playing in the background so that your customers relax while waiting in line.

OK, we came up with five ideas in about than twenty minutes. Obviously, you know your business b

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

etter than we ever will. You should easily be able to come up with a half-dozen ideas of your own that will surprise and delight your customers.

Here’s a great exercise:

Cre

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

ate a Surprise Upgrade and Customer Respite “Idea Matrix”.
Goal: Take 30 minutes and think up 7 ideas!!!

Take a piece of paper, or use your computer to make a simple tab

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

le. You’ll have four columns, labeled (from left to right):

Idea
Best Guess: Dollar Cost
Best Guess: Time Required
Target Implementat

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

ion Date

Then underneath, draw seven lines…and create those seven ideas.

After you’re done you’ll want to--you guessed it--discuss with your Bloom Team and then

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

implement the best.

Remember: Brand (who you are) + Package (your Face to the Customer) + People (customers and employees) = Marketing Success.

© 2006 Marketing Hawks

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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Category benefits are a poor substitute for brand meaning and brand definition. It is one of the major pratfalls in brand development and a trap into which many brands fall victim. Defining your brand by such benign promises is a sure fire bet to promote the market leader — not exactly what you have in mind when your goal is to grab market share and outsmart your competition.

In the past couple of years, an increasing number of State Agencies and financial firms have been re-addressing cost cutting solutions by sending customer service jobs to rural areas of the United States, where labor costs can be dramatically lower and where skilled labor forces are available.

A profession or hobby that uses a power-driven machine tool such as a lathe or drill to shape metal, is known as machining. The person specializing in its use is called a machinist. A machine shop that is run from home is called a home machine shop.

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