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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of experience levels on consumers' value perceptions in their use of a social marketing preventative health service. The study uses services thinking to investigate customer value in a social marketing consumption situation.

An online, self-completion survey was conducted on n=853 Australian women who were users of breastscreening services.

Experienced users derived higher levels of functional and emotional value than novice users and reported higher levels of satisfaction and behavioural intentions to use the service again. However, path analysis indicated that satisfaction was a stronger driver of behavioural intentions for novice users.

The findings highlight the need to understand and segment target audiences in more meaningful ways beyond traditional demographic segmentation. There is a need to understand the value benefits that target audiences seek and acknowledge that these value and service experience perceptions are likely to change over time as target audiences transition from novice to experienced users. This is useful in allowing health services to consider ways of providing a degree of customisation to target audiences, resulting in higher levels of satisfaction, particularly amongst novice users, leading to behavioural intentions to return.

Two novel approaches are used to understand social marketing behaviour: value theory and a services perspective. Through the examination of experience levels, this study acknowledges the enduring nature of many social marketing behaviours, allowing social marketers to examine differences in target audiences' experiences based on whether they are new to or familiar with a behaviour. This provides a fresh perspective in understanding target audiences in social marketing through an understanding of their value perceptions which influence their behaviour, and how these value perceptions are likely to change over time.

This conceptually‐focused paper looks at particular changes implemented in the UK National Health Service. The specific context is the creation of a new organisational form: the primary care group, which brings together general practitioners and other primary care staff in a given locality. The paper attempts to examine the consequences, for the development of these groups, of the shift from competition (in the internal market) to relationships based on collaboration and partnership. The broad policy objectives envisage much greater emphasis on working in partnership, participating in strategy and planning (via new health improvement programmes), developing joint working, and promoting the integration of service delivery. A relationship marketing perspective is explored as one way of conceptualising the development of new relationships between primary care groups, health authorities, local authorities, trusts and other agencies and the paper suggests that relationship marketing offers a way of facilitating policy change.

Recent literature within public service logic has called for more explicit conceptualisation of customer value in public services. This study aims to fill this gap by examining how the customer value approach can be applied in the management of public health care services.

This study is a qualitative case study of management of public health care services in Finland. The authors interviewed 17 regional health care service developers and analyzed the interview data using thematic analysis.

The study suggests five propositions for applying customer value approach from the marketing literature in public health care service management. The study enables a deeper understanding of customer value creation in this context and improvement of public health care services.

This study contributes to the public management research in general and public service logic research in particular by suggesting what constitutes customer value in public health care services.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of multiple actors in the value creation process for a preventative health service, and observe the subsequent impact on key service outcomes of satisfaction and customer behaviour intentions to use a preventative health service again in the future.

An online self-completion survey of Australian women (n=797) was conducted to test the proposed framework in the context of a free, government-provided breastscreening service. Data were analysed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM).

The findings indicate that functional and emotional value are created from organisational and customer resources. These findings indicate that health service providers and customers are jointly responsible for the successful creation of value, leading to desirable outcomes for all stakeholders.

The results highlight to health professionals the aspects of service that can be managed in order to create value with target audiences. The findings also indicate the importance of the resources provided by users in the creation of value, signifying the importance of customer education and management.

This study provides a significant contribution to social marketing through the provision of an empirically validated model of value creation in a preventative health service. The model demonstrates how the creation and provision of value can lead to the achievement of desirable social behaviours – a key aim of social marketing.

This paper aims to demonstrate the utility of branding theory for social marketing services. Specifically, this is to our knowledge the first to investigate brand personality (BP) and brand personality appeal (BPA) in a single study as predictors for consumer attitudes and intentions to engage with a service.

The associations between BP and BPA and their subsequent associations with attitudes and intentions are tested in two service types, i.e. a commercial marketing service (banking) and a social marketing service (health screening). This involved a cross-sectional dual online survey administered to a sample of 395 women 50-69 years old in Queensland, Australia. This sampling criterion represented the primary target audience for the social marketing service, which was breastscreening and was maintained for the banking services sample. Multiple mediation analysis using a bootstrapping approach was conducted using Mplus 6.11.

BP and BPA perform similarly across the two service types. BP and BPA are related and have direct and indirect associations with consumer attitudes and behavioural intentions towards both commercial and social marketing services. Specifically, the BP traits of responsibility and activity were found to have significant direct and indirect relationships with attitudes and behavioural intentions towards both commercial and social marketing services. The relationships for the emotionality and simplicity traits were non-significant. The results also suggest that the attractiveness, favourability and clarity BPA traits had the strongest associations with consumer responses.

This study demonstrates the utility of using branding in social marketing services, which to date has been under-utilised. It also offers originality by combining BP and BPA in the same empirical inquiry, which to date has been examined separately. A new and alternative factor structure for BPA is provided, and future research is recommended to further examine BPA in this and other contexts.

While the mature consumer segment (55‐and‐older) is rapidly growing in size, so too are their preferences, motives and spending patterns. The health‐care product and services industry, an industry driven by age, is no exception to the need to identify and accurately target this aging consumer segment. The purpose of this paper is to report on the preferences and marketing implications of this mature consumer segment with respect to health‐care products and services.

The information reported in this paper comes from two large‐scale national studies. The first study gathered information on health‐care services, information sources, payment systems, attitudes toward health‐care providers, and shopping habits. The second study gathered information on selected health‐care products, mass media habits, and several types of health‐related concerns and lifestyles.

The results of these studies show major differences in the way in which consumers within the mature consumer segment respond to various health‐care marketing offerings and provide the basis for developing strategic recommendations for marketing health‐care products and services to the mature population.

This paper uses a segmentation model based on aging processes and life circumstances, known as “gerontographics.” This unique segmentation technique has demonstrated superiority over the past 20 years through research conducted at the Center for Mature Consumer Studies at Georgia State University.

Contrary to want-based services, customer participation has got lesser attention in high-credence services like health care. Customer participation for patients with chronic illnesses could be life-threatening and goes beyond the service organization’s physical environment. Realizing the importance of transformative service research in health-care services, this study aims to propose and validate the conceptualization of customer participation for patients with chronic illnesses.

The study uses sequential exploratory research design with mixed method research. The first phase is a qualitative exploration of the nature and meaning of customer participation by synthesizing theory and insights from semi-structured interviews (N = 75) with doctors, patients and paramedical staff. Next, survey data (N = 690) of patients with chronic illnesses is used to validate the proposed conceptualization. Finally, nomological validity was also tested on an additional survey data set (N = 362) using SEM and FsQCA.

The findings reveal that health-care customer participation is a three-dimensional behavioral construct in which a customer can participate by sharing information, involving in decision-making and ensuring compliance. The study also demonstrates that customer participation is a critical driver of satisfaction with life and perceived control on illness.

The research provides policy guidelines for owners and operators of health-care organizations in developing frameworks for collecting participation data, which can be used in strategies for seeking customer participation.

The research conceptualizes and validates “customer participation” as a multidimensional higher-order construct for patients with chronic illnesses, rarely focused in services marketing and management research on health care.

Consumer‐driven health care (CDHC) has been proposed to reduce the USA health care costs through greater free market economic exposure. The purpose of this paper is to review the USA health care system, insurance plans, and CDHC plan elements and assumptions regarding patients, service providers, and insurers, in order to identify research and social marketing needs of CDHC.

The paper is an assessment of literature from academic and practitioner communities.

Social marketing programs can contribute to preparing consumers and practitioners for CDHC. However, the degree to which CDHC can reduce health care costs is uncertain. More research is needed comparing CDHC plans with traditional plans and comparing CDHC enrollees with enrollees in other types of plans to determine the true benefits and costs of CDHC and to identify consumers' information needs. Research is needed into how to gather and provide understandable health care provider quality and cost‐effectiveness information, and into how current insurers can help consumers make effective CDHC decisions. Research is needed as to how CDHC is perceived by consumers, providers, and insurers, and the use of CDHC reimbursement accounts and their effect on behavior and costs. Research is also needed into which decisions can be made by consumers without specialized professional knowledge. Provider research is needed into outcome risk adjustments, how practitioners view CDHC, how willing practitioners are to participate in a more open‐free market, and how CDHC may affect professional practices.

Insights gained from this paper can contribute to social marketing program designs needed for practitioner and consumer acceptance and effective use of CDHC.

Describes the job of selling health‐care services and compares it to traditional types of sales positions. Providing such a comparison may stimulate marketing managers in other service industries to conduct their own survey of salesforce characteristics and to analyze critically the findings. The research design serves as a model for the research process, analysis and interpretation to be utilized in other service marketing arenas. Promotion of health care has evolved from an emphasis on advertising to a current interest in personal selling. Along with public relations and planning research, sales is becoming a significant part of the marketing function of health‐care organizations. Specifically, the study was designed to define the basic characteristics that profile the present salesforce in health care in the USA. Addresses attributes of the organizations, as well as organizational variables. Managing a successful salesforce in the approaching health‐care reform era will be essential to an organization′s survival.

The purpose of this study is to explore the marketing success factors of an international private healthcare company operating in Lebanon and examine how these factors evolve depending on different business phases.

An extreme single-case study of a Lebanese healthcare center was conducted. The data sources consisted of semi-structured interviews and archival data including industry reports, newspaper articles and internal documents.

This study offers interesting, non-studied insights into marketing success factors in the private healthcare sector. In particular, it shows how to evolve from more traditional business models to disruptive yet very attractive personalized services with high-quality standards.

While the theoretical position developed fits the unique characteristics of the studied industry and country settings, it is necessary to be cautious in generalizing the study to other geographical settings and industries.

This research provides managers and decision-makers with insights into how to identify, organize and develop success factors in the marketing discipline during different business phases of private healthcare organizations.

This study contributes to the scarce literature on the marketing of private healthcare organizations by exploring success factors in a non-studied geographical and cultural context.