Case Study Write-Up: Aravind Eye Care System

Case Study Write-up: Aravind Eye Care System

By Feilong Liu

In India, there are numerous people who became victims of needless blindness and other permanent eye problems that could otherwise be treated. Aravind Eye Care System was established with a mission of restoring eyesight to the millions of people with poor vision, elimination of unnecessary blindness, correcting moderate visual impairment by providing high quality eye care to the rich and poor alike. However, their outreach camps only reached seven percent of people with eye problems in rural area.

There is a need for Aravind to identify and understand the difference between rural and urban customers. First of all, the biggest difference is the purchasing power. Urban customers usually have relatively high-income levels, which attributes to high purchasing power, while most of the rural customers have relatively low-income levels and thus their purchasing power is relatively low. Second, urban customers and rural customer have different demands for products and services. They are thinking of different aspects of products and services. Urban customers care more about the brand’s value of the products or services they purchase, while rural customers focus more on how much money they will spend and the durability of the products and services. Third, urban customers and rural customers have different levels of access to and awareness of products and services. The rural customers usually lack the awareness of and access to products and services. In this case, the rural population lacks the awareness that blindness has treatment and most of the blindness are curable though surgeries. In addition to the lack of awareness, the rural population also lacks access to the hospitals.

There are different factors that contributed to poor acceptance of eye care services by rural customers. To begin with, many rural customers have poor acceptance and awareness of eye care treatment. Like I said, many of them lack the awareness that most of the blindness could be cured or corrected. People from the rural area were not well informed about the importance of accessing such services hence they were comfortable with the situation. Some of them have no idea about the benefits that Aravind offered, such as free diagnosis and surgery. In addition, most of the rural customers are afraid of surgery. They may hold the opinion that instead of curing their blindness, the surgery would have bad effect on their health. Moreover, cost is another factor that discourage rural from reaching for eye care services. Although Aravind offered surgeries for free or at a subsidized price, the surgeries could only be performed in base hospitals and thus patients who live in the rural areas that Aravind’s outreach camp did not reach to might not be able to afford the cost of transportation, lost wages, food and accommodation. Sometimes even they can afford the cost, there are not appropriate infrastructure facilities for them to make the trip to the base hospitals.