Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

What specifically are you asking for? Why? Is this a homework assignment?

A little background. My current partner's former wife died of a kidney related disease. She had had severe cystitis for many years, and her doctor prescribed anti-biotics. Since all seemed well, this continued for years. Sadly the doctor was not aware of the risk to the kidneys, which were effectively destroyed by the medicine. The point of saying this is that when suffering from cystitis I use a homeopathic remedy which is both relatively safe and powerful. Any of my friends taking it attest to its almost immediate effects on what is a painful problem.

Natural remedies can - and should be used long term. I could not say the same for the chemical varieties. I put this into context in the following way: if you break a leg in a motoring accident, the emergency services will help you by using painkillers, anti-biotics and goodness knows what else to hand. However, if you want to set the bone properly and quickly, use homeopathic symphytum (common comfrey root). Again, I can personally attest to its almost immediate and near magical effects on broken bones. What is more, eating common comfrey is not dangerous. Nor is taking it in any form, and that includes homeopathy.

You can say what you like about the "science" that denies homeopathy as a belief structure. Tell that to my local farmer who uses such remedies on his cows, none of whom are known to hold strong beliefs in anything save the freshness of their hay. I also use it on my garden and there is plenty of research that backs up its effectiveness.

The problem is more one of perception than pricing. Most doctors have little experience of healing bones with anything but conventional medicines. Given that my ex broke two rib-bones (you cannot set these), there was no remedy save paracetamols. Two Symphytum C6 tablets saw the pain disappear inside ten minutes.

Whilst not immediate to your strategy, it should give you some pointers as to how herbs could be effectively used alongside the conventional medicines. Conventional training does not usually allow for herbs or suchlike.

Moriarty xx

For what it's worth, the positioning statement, "To enhance the health of the United States population through nature” sounds more like a mission statement. It's too nebulous to be a good positioning statement.

A positioning statement needs to define the primary target audience (as narrowly as you can define it), and it needs to identify the unique and important benefit you deliver for that target audience. Then you need to provide the reason someone should believe your benefit promise.

Ideally you can do this in two carefully worded sentences -- one with the promise and target audience definition, and one with the reason why.

Being a health care industry related product, the given native american herbs will need to be marketed according to the purpose(s) they serve. This is the basis for your determination of the Four P's for your subject. If the herbs, lets say are meant for ingestion and provide nutritional benefits then they belong in the nutritional natural or homoeopathic medicinal product branch.
If on the other hand they are to be applied to bruised skin or such and have an external effect then they belong in the pain reduction natural medicine branch. So the nature of your product will determine the relevance and features of the Four P's already mentioned above. If you can give details on them we'd be better able to address the question.

Let's inject a few other Ps, shall we? Ps that stand apart from the Big 4.

PERMISSION. Do you have it, or have you secured it from the tribes in question and will these people receive a cut of the revenue?

PERCEPTION: What is the buyer's perception of the efficacy of these products to ease the ills they're said to ease?