The Competitiveness Research Of Manufacturer’s After-sales Service In The Medical Linear Accelerator Industry

Since the health system reform of China from the year of 2000, the market demand for medical equipment and instruments in the country has been increasingly expanded, and the investment by the central and local government to the medical and health institutions at all levels increases year by year. Under the great market for both demand and supply, the medical linier accelerator(MLA), as the most important and essential clinical diagnosis and treatment equipment for cancers, has been also experienced a golden development stage. With the fast development of the MLA market, the competition between major MLA manufacturers becomes increasingly intense. Either Chinese or international medical equipment manufacturers all view China as their market focus. However, because of technology advances, technical personnel mobility and increasing common usage of MLA, the products from different MLA manufactures tend to be more and more similar in terms of function, quality and costs. Therefore, the after-sale service becomes a major approach of major manufacturers for realizing products differentiation, improving products competitiveness, and enhancing their brand value and impacts. Furthermore, the aftersale service also becomes an important breakthrough point for those major manufacturers to race to control favorable position in the increasingly intense market competition.The paper focuses its research on the after-sale service of the MLA industry. Taking the Company V which the author works for as the research case, and using various methods including literature review, specialists consulting, cases analysis, and Porter’s Five Forces Model study, the paper analyses the features and competition status of the after-sale service of the MLA industry. And through analysis by Porter’s Five Forces Model, the paper studies and discusses how to enhance the competitiveness of the after-sale service of the MLA industry and help the industry to find solutions for “similar products, similar function, similar quality” problem, and provide the industry with valuable information for being in a competitive position in the market, and be also helpful to those hospital and related medical equipment companies in China.The paper mainly achieves understandings in the following four aspects:(1) the after-sale service of MLA industry are much more complicated, which has ten features such as: safety always the first key issue, long training period of technical supporters, high technical complexity etc.;(2) the major competitors involved in the MLA market of China are: the medical engineering division of hospitals, the aftersale service section of the manufacturers and the independent after-sale service company. The three parties have their own competitive strength or weakness and different market performance;(3) the contract ratio(CR) of after-sale service is a very important index for evaluating the competitiveness of a company in the MLA industry. Based on case analysis, the low CR of after-sale service of a manufacturer is mainly controlled by four factors; and(4) using the Porter’s Five Forces Model and integrating case analysis, the paper makes theoretical analysis to the competitiveness of the after-sale service of the MLA industry, and achieves understandings in five aspects.On the basis of the above research results, the paper proposed the following approaches which should be helpful to increase the competitiveness of the after-sale service of MLA manufacturers:(1) pay more close attention to the technical team construction and professional talent training;(2) develop different services to meet as much as possible the demand by various customers;(3) enhance the internal organization reform and cooperation; and(4) fully utilize and develop internet technology.