This document provides an overview of key concepts in marketing optical businesses. It discusses analyzing problems in merchandising, sales promotion, pricing strategies, and competition. Several facts about the eye care market are presented, including demographics of patients and revenue sources. The document then covers the basic elements of a marketing plan including positioning, identifying customers, defining the mission, developing products and services, promoting offerings, setting prices, and choosing locations. Life cycles of products and considerations for pricing at each stage are also summarized.

1. Marketing
for
optical businesses
Hossein Mirzaei
Msc optom
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2. Learning objectives
 Analyze and develop solutions to
problems in merchandising
 Sales promotion and store operation
 Assess and evaluate pricing strategies
economic problems and competition
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3. Eye Care Market
Facts
 In every community eye care is a large
market
 Eye care providers are plentiful. Most
of them have excess capacity.
 Most patients prefer independent
practice eye doctors.
 Presbyopes represent the majority of
patients served by eye care providers.
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4. Eye Care Market
Facts:
 Women purchase eyewear more
frequently
 Eye care product technology is
rapidly evolving
 In most optometric practices, the
sale of eyeglasses produces the
greatest share of revenue
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5. Eye Care Market
Facts:
 Contact lens patients generate
25-30% of gross revenue in the
average practice
 The Internet is transforming retailing
and business-to-business
transactions
 Eye care is a somewhat seasonal
business
 ……. wwww.optiran.ir

6. The size of your organization isnot important
The size of your bank account is
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7. Increasing Practice
Net Income:
 See more patients per day
 "Sell" more to each patient.
 Raise fees (or reduce discounts)
 Avoid costly errors.
 Reduce expenses
© South-Western Publishing

8. WHAT IS MARKETING?
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9. Marketing is:
 The process of creating products and
services
 The process of promotion those
products and services,pricing them and
distributing them in a specific
marketplace
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10. The Ps of Marketing
 Planning Strategy
 Product or service
 Price cost, profit
 Promotion creating desire for product
 Place location
 Positioning in marketplace
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11. PLANNIG
 The Strategy of Marketing
We must answer important questions
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12. Positioning
 The first marketing Question
What market position will I assume?
Or who am I?
Quality
price
Fast Service
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13. Marketing Identification
The second Marketing question :
 Who is my customer?
Market segmentation:
grouping people with the same needs or
wants
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14. Key segmentation questions:
 Geographic - where do they live?
 Demographic –what is their age
,sex,family size ,income, education
 Psychographic-what is their social
class,lifestyle,personality
 Behavioral –what usage rate do they
employ?are they loyal?
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15. Third question:
 What is my mission or purpose?
State in one or two sentences
This should become the foundation of your business
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16. An example of a mission
statement would be:
 We aim to specifically serve our
patients with only the highest quality
frames, lenses and contact lenses
© South-Western Publishing

17. Product (service)
The single most important marketing activity
is selecting right product for your market
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18. Product attributes:
 The physical elements :size color
weight
 The value elements:quality
,durability,reliabilty
 Style or Fashion
taste:modern,conservative
Marketing success will depend on knowing all
product attributes
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19. Generic and specific needs
Understanding the difference
Modern marketing tactics suggests that we
promote the specific attributes of products
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20. The product Mix:
The total product line that is offered for sale
i.e.frames, lenses ,sunglasses,etc
The mix represents everything needed or
desired by the customer
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21. The product portfolio:
 Group of closely-related products for
example the frame board
The key to managing a product potflio is to work
with it until it provides as much profit as possible
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22. The product life cyle
(George day)
 Introductory stage: new and exciting
 Growth stage:popular items-most wanted
 Maturity stage: profitable days behind
 Decline stage:cost you money to keep
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23. Introduction
 competing against older, established
products
 businesses need to identify those that are
dissatisfied with the current problems
 product should be basic and not too
complicated
 guarantee and warranties
 not widely distributed
 price usually high
 promotion needs to inform the customer
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24. Growth
 if product successful, competitors will
enter the market
 features and options must be added
 wider distribution
 adjustment in pricing
 promotion must attract customers,
advantages of the product
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25. Maturity
 sales peak, profit begin to decline, customers
have the product and there are many companies
in the market, competition becomes very intense
 all products features, option,
guarantees/warranties are similar (so customer
service options could be added)
 pricing become very competitive
 increase availability of the product becomes
wider
 promotion – why their product is better
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26. Decline
 product is no longer satisfying or they
discover new and better products, sales
drop, little or no profit
 try to identify other uses
 distribution is reduce
 price is usually reduced
 more selective and less promotions
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27. Stages in a Life Cycle
SALES
PROFITS
Introduction Growth Maturity Decline
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28. Adding to
your product portfolio
Marketing reasons
Technology reasons
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29. Promotion
 Promoting—in house programs
 Advertising—out of house ads
 Selling—the activity employed to gain
business
 Public relations—education and public
awareness activities
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30. Pricing
 What is your market position?
 Who is the target group?
 What is the marketing mix?
 What are the competetion prices?
 Do you need to make changes due to a
marketing condition?
 Any change due to economic condition?
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31. General pricing considerations:
 Cost factors
 Competition factors
 Supply / demand factors
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32. Product life cycle pricing
 Introductory high price
 Growth stage cont,ed high price
 Mature stage reduce price
 Decline cost or even lower
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33. place
 Location is the key to success
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34. SWOP-an analysis of your
competition and yourself
S stands for strength
W stands for weakness
O stands for opportunity
P stands for problems
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35. Some usefull sites:
 www.mba-ce.com
 www.reviewob.com
 www.optometricmanagement.com
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