Optometry Practice Strategy For Nonmarket Environment of Eye Care

Most of our efforts as Optometrists and practice managers are focused on the practice business strategy to sustain profit and growth. We frequently find ourselves unable to answer some questions related to practices stalling not because of their strategy but because of roadblocks that have been imposed by the government, societal institutions, or legislation that turned our strategy to produce unintended consequences inconsistent with the company’s core values or made our strategy criticized by the public and threatened by government action. While the market is subject to forces of supply and demand, the economy is subject to both market and nonmarket forces. Nonmarket forces influence the economy from outside the market system and they include societal institutions or organizations, be it economic, political, social, or cultural: the government, the media, lobbies, public institutions, and so on.

Since the environment of a business is composed of market and nonmarket components, any business strategy must integrate both market and nonmarket considerations. Nonmarket considerations that structure the interactions of the company outside its market and must be included in your business strategy are characterized by four I’s:

Issues: what nonmarket strategies address and affect your optometry practice. Legislations, regulations, diversity, public pressure on fees and expensive designer glasses, product liability. Ontario Optometrists and the government’s latest dispute is one example.

Interests individuals (unorganized interests) and groups (organized interests) with preferences about, or a stake in, an issue;

Institutions the relevant set of bodies that the firm must interact with: sometimes those institutions are domestic or local and sometimes they are international or global.;

Information what the interested parties know (your company is the most knowledgeable about the patient’s preferences while the other institutions and the government are more knowledgeable about the concerns) or believe about the relation between actions and consequences and about the preferences and capabilities of the interested parties.

In addition to the four I’s, a nonmarket strategy should include readiness to probe nonmarket environment changes and follow the issue life cycle. Nonmarket environment issues originate from scientific discoveries, technological advancements, new understandings, institutional change, interest group activity, and moral concerns. Some of those sources of issues have implications on both the business’s market and nonmarket strategy. The nonmarket environment changes as issues are resolved, new issues arise, or current issues progress. A sound strategy should prepare the practice to spot in advance changes in a nonmarket environment and should describe its approach to the issue changes: a strategy could consist of responding to the issue when its effect is strong enough to force the firm to act, responding as soon as the issue emerges, or acting and responding in advance by proactively implementing a preventive approach to the issue.