Search results

The introduction of regulated competition in health care in several Western countries confronts health care providing organizations with changing relationships, with their environment and a need for knowledge and skills to analyse and improve their market position. Marketing receives more and more attention, as recent developments in this field of study provide a specific perspective on the relationships between an organization and external and internal parties. In doing so, a basis is offered for network management. A problem is that the existing marketing literature is not entirely appropriate for the specific characteristics of health care. After a description of the developments in marketing and its most recent key concepts, the applicability of these concepts in health‐care organizations is discussed. States that for the health‐care sector, dominated by complex networks of interorganizational relationships, the strategic marketing vision on relationships can be very useful. At the same time however, the operationalization of these concepts requires special attention and a distinct role of the management of health‐care organizations, because of the characteristics of such organizations and the specific type of their service delivery.

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.

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.

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.

As consumer health-care spending increases, so does the need for effective communication of preventive health-care information (PHCI) with the potential to prompt lifestyle changes. Through proactive, effective dissemination of PHCI, health-care service providers can minimize and prevent costly health conditions while improving the efficiency of a traditionally reactive health-care system. Taking into account the considerable time consumers spend on social media and networks (SM&N) and hefty health-care spending among Baby Boomer and Generation X consumers, this study aims to address critical questions concerning the importance of SM&N for gathering PHCI, SM&N preferences for gathering PHCI and the types of behavioral changes consumers have pursued in response to PHCI.

Designed as a generational cohort analysis, this study is based on the responses of 936 Baby Boomer and Generation X respondents to a questionnaire containing 200 items related to PHCI and social/digital media as a vehicle for acquiring both general and preventive health information. Crosstab analysis was used to examine differences in the characteristics of the generational cohorts. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to assess differences in the degree of importance Baby Boomer and Generation X health consumers assign to 28 SM&N sites as delivery systems of PHCI. The researchers used ANOVA to determine generational differences in behavioral changes associated with a healthier lifestyle as a result of exposure to PHCI.

There are significant differences in the characteristics of Baby Boomer and Generation X cohorts. Generation X health-care consumers assign greater importance to SM&N sites as PHCI delivery systems. Additionally, Generation X health-care consumers report greater behavioral change resulting from exposure to PHCI.

New information is provided concerning health-care consumer perceptions of SM&N as a source of PHCI and the behavioral changes consumers pursue as a result of PHCI exposure.

This paper measures the effectiveness of interactive health-care marketing activities, explaining the role of SM&N as an effective source of PHCI and providing marketers with insights useful for PHCI content management and dissemination.

Effective dissemination of PHCI via SM&N may help prevent illness among Baby Boomer and Generation X consumers and, accordingly, improve quality of life while easing the increasing pressure on the US health-care system.

Study results evidence the value of SM&N sites to health service providers as they endeavor to improve and extend consumer lives through dissemination of PHCI. Ideas and insights within this paper will inform and enhance social media marketing management practices within pharmaceutical and health-care organizations.

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.

The diversity of the health care sector makes it difficult to come up with managerially useful generalizations concerning marketing practice in health care organizations. Develops specific categories of health care offerings and proposes a two‐by‐two matrix for classifying health care offerings based on customer participation and complexity of the health care offering. In each quadrant, offers strategic marketing insights into how the nature of the health care offering might affect the marketing task. Uses network theory as the guiding framework in constructing the health care classification schema.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the application of marketing in health care, and in particular to assess its relevance to clinical leadership in the UK NHS.

The paper discusses a marketing perspective using literature and policy material.

The paper suggests that a marketing perspective is relevant in the UK NHS. Health service reforms have created a market in which choice and competition are levers for improving performance. Central to this is the notion of patient choice. Marketing is a way of exploring these issues. The paper suggests that there may be resistance to ideas originating from the private sector, and this needs to be overcome.

Marketing offers a framework and a set of techniques with which to improve organisational performance and ensure a focus on quality in meeting the needs of the patient. The new payment‐by‐results funding system ensures that money follows patients. Providers will need to focus on quality to attract patients and track resulting funding streams.

The paper demonstrates that private sector methods and techniques are relevant in the public sector, although one must take into account differing contexts.

The economic shock posed by the current COVID-19 outbreak brought out a worldwide public health emergency with a close relationship between the industrial marketing practices, the health level of society and its economic development. The purpose of this study is to analyse the industrial dynamics in health care and their impact on economic growth and health status.

To empirically investigate the relationship between growth and health, the authors use a data set drawn from 29 selected Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries over the period 2000 and 2019. Using panel regressions, the authors investigate the impact of the health-care industry measured in terms of health status, health expenditure, sales on pharmaceutical products, the number of persons working in health care and the coverage by private health insurances. Fixed effect and random effect regressions are used to estimate this model.

Overall, the results are suggestive of a nexus between the industrial marketing dynamics of health-care context and economic growth – both interacting and improving each other. As the quality of the health-care market enhances, the economy grows richer and the health status of the population improves considerably.

To support health-care markets in OECD countries, health policymakers need to formulate a long-term industrial health policy that addresses all the social and individual determinants of health.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study to provide a better understanding of the relationship between health-care industrial dynamics and economic growth in OECD countries along different dimensions.