TheWellBox
- Discipline
- City and Regional Planning
- Date
- 2018
- related to
- Baker, Monica Grant, Jack Emanuel, Yetty
- Description
- WellBox is a proposed social enterprise that will help improve population health management and economic status of Offinso North District (OND) residents. The WellBoxconcept comes from the emerging popularity of subscription service boxes common in the United States such as BirchBox. in which consumers receive access to products they find valuable and learn about current trends. This idea has been modified to fit the needs of rural OND residents. Customers of Wellbox will subscribe to the service and will receive a monthly shipment of critical basic healthcare supplies like antibacterial soap, pain medication, water-purifying tablets, and mosquito nets. Additionally, Wellbox will train females in the Offinso North District to sell and distribute the product and earn income in return. In order to create the Wellbox social enterprise in the Offinso North District, a business plan must first be created. The first step in creating a business plan is to conduct market research to prove the idea has a market of customers willing to pay for the product and that the enterprise will be sustainable (Wenzel, 2012). WellBoxmarket research has been divided into two stages. The initial stage of market research was conducted from the United States. Information about the health status, accessibility to health products, and competitors in the Offinso North District was gathered. The second stage of market research will take place over six days in the Offinso North District when opinions from residents of the Offinso North District and potentialWellBox stakeholders will be gathered (See Appendix A for the project plan). While in the Offinso North District, surveys will be administered and focus groups will be conducted. Anne Wenzel’s The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Market Research and Janet Billson’s white paper “Conducting Focus Group Research Across Cultures: Consistency and Comparability” guided creation of the survey and focus group questionnaires (See Appendices B and C). Additionally, a research proposal has been submitted to The Ohio State University’s Institutional Review Board since the market research will involve human subjects (see Appendix D). Upon completion of the market research and upon return from the Offinso North District, a business plan for WellBox will be created (See Appendix E for the business plan template).