The Unimed Leste Fluminense teaching case presents a decisive situation faced by Dilson Reis, the organization market director. The case describes the company's history since its foundation and highlights the moment in which the director, pressured by both competition and extensive regulations of the industry, wonders how to increase its customer base. At the time of the decision, the industry had greatly intensified competition, with the most intense disputes being for large corporate clients, including both among health insurance sales agents and among the brokers who sold these plans. The preference for corporate clients stemmed primarily from the restrictions imposed by the regulations of the National Agency for Supplementary Health (ANS), which apply only to individual customers. The structure of sales channels of the Unimed Leste Fluminense was not well defined, as they competed for both individual customers and corporate clients, without any form of coordination of management of the stores, sales representatives, dealers or brokers. The company was worried about the potential sales channels conflicts, since it was doing everything to win over customers, but had little influence over its sales partners. The case provides an opportunity for discussion on the need to align the marketing channels structure to the firm's growth objectives. It also allows for reflection on the nature of multi-channel conflicts and the actions required for their management. This is a real life case, drawn from interviews with Benito Petraglia, Dilson Reis and Jair da Costa Jr., managing director, director of marketing and market manager of the Unimed Leste Fluminense office respectively. To facilitate the process of student involvement, the dilemma of the case was presented from Dilson Reis' perspective. Secondary information was used for data triangulation and to enrich the case description. Secondary data was also used to describe the private health care sector, more specifically the segment of health insurance plans, to offer students the opportunity to contextualize the case. The discussion of the case in the disciplines of distribution and marketing channels in post-graduate courses is recommended, especially for programs whose method assumes a participant-centered learning approach. It is expected that the student takes an active role in the individual case preparation, group discussions and the plenary session.
Marketing Channels; Distribution Channels; Multichannel Conflict; Supplementary Health Sector; Teaching Case
