Audira Articles

In an age where differentiation through best practice competes with value for money propositions, what path should we follow in our own practices? Should we be aiming to blaze a trail by “doing more” in an attempt to set ourselves apart from other providers? Or should we be looking to streamline our models to remain competitive on price?

As hearing care develops in the years to come each of us will encounter new research and new ideas on what should or shouldn't be included in “best practice”.

But there is a temptation with best practice to include anything and everything, to confuse doing more with real world benefits significant enough to justify the cost implications to the person paying for the service – whether that's a patient, a consumer or a third party.

In Hearing care’s response to commoditisation we looked at the impact of commoditisation and the accessibility of information on hearing care practitioners. But hearing aid manufacturers are just as vulnerable, as we shall see, partly from the changes in consumer behaviour and partly from the way they maintain the relationships with their key channels. Understanding these relationships and their impact on the Consumer are the key to minimising the risks, maintaining margins and reducing the likelihood of outsiders encroaching on their market.

In Hearing Care in the Age of Commoditisation & Information we saw how a combination of increasing commoditisation and the accessibility of information has forever changed the behaviour and expectations of consumers. We also saw how vulnerable traditional hearing care is to these changes in which expertise is slowly but surely sidelined by consumer knowledge, and the price needs justifying as never before.

In this part we'll be reviewing the three main ways that traditional hearing care has responded so far, before looking at what constitutes true differentiation and how hearing care practices should seek to differentiate themselves.