Future thinking: the role of marketing in healthcare
ISSN: 0309-0566
Article publication date: 1 October 2018
Issue publication date: 12 September 2019
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss how, using a futures studies perspective, marketing is uniquely positioned to address future challenges facing health-care service systems.
Design/methodology/approach
The futures studies perspective involves predicting probable, preferable and possible futures. Using digital and face-to-face data collection methods, health-care professionals, academics and patients were asked about their perspectives and expectations of health care’s future. Using grounded theory, responses were analyzed to a point of thematic saturation to expose the immediate probable future and a preferred future of health care.
Findings
Patients expressed a desire to participate in health-care delivery, impacting caregivers’ roles. Thus, co-creation of value in this context is contingent on the relationship among stakeholders: patients, patients’ families, caregivers and health-care organizations. Concordance, a type of value co-creation, is an effective way for physicians and patients to ameliorate health outcomes.
Research limitations/implications
Although a more diverse sample would be ideal, insight from health-care professionals, academics and patients across global regions was obtained.
Practical implications
To achieve a preferred future in health care, practitioners should implement a three-pronged approach, which includes health promotion and prevention, appropriate use of technology in health care and concordance.
Originality/value
Using patients, health-care professionals and academics, this research broadens the concept of value co-creation in health care. Additionally, paths (i.e. promotion and prevention, technology use and concordance) to a preferred health-care future are uncovered.
Keywords
Citation
Anderson, S., Rayburn, S.W. and Sierra, J.J. (2019), "Future thinking: the role of marketing in healthcare", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 53 No. 8, pp. 1521-1545. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-10-2017-0779
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited