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Health-care marketing typically entails a coordinated set of outreach and communications designed to attract consumers (patients in the health-care context) who require services for a better health outcome and guide them throughout their health-care journey to achieve a higher quality of life. The purpose of this study is to understand the progress and trends in healthcare marketing strategy (HMS) literature between 2018 and 2022, with a special emphasis on the pre- and post-Covid-19 periods.

The authors examine 885 HMS-related documents from the WOS database between 2018 and 2022 that were extracted using a keyword-based search strategy. After that, the authors present the descriptive statistics related to the corpus. Finally, the authors use author co-citation analysis (ACA) and bibliographic coupling (BC) techniques to examine the corpus.

The authors present the descriptive statistics as research themes, emerging sub-research areas, leading journals, organisations, funding agencies and nations. Further, the bibliometric analysis reveals the existence of five thematic clusters: Cluster 1: macroeconomic and demographic determinants of healthcare service delivery; Cluster 2: strategies in healthcare marketing; Cluster 3: socioeconomics in healthcare service delivery; Cluster 4: data analytics and healthcare service delivery; Cluster 5: healthcare product and process innovations.

This study provides an in-depth analysis of the advancements made in HMS-related research between 2018 and 2022. In addition, this study describes the evolution of research in this field from before to after the Covid-19 pandemic. The findings of this study have both research and practical significance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of its kind to use bibliometric analysis to identify advancements and trends in HMS-related research and to examine the pattern before and after Covid-19 pandemic.

The demand for healthcare innovation is increasing, and not much is known about how entrepreneurial firms search for and sell to customers in the highly regulated and complex healthcare market. Drawing on effectuation perspectives, we explore how entrepreneurial digital healthcare firms with disruptive innovations search for early customers in the healthcare sector.

This study uses a qualitative, longitudinal multiple-case design of four entrepreneurial Nordic telehealth firms. In-depth interviews were conducted with founders and senior managers over a period of 27 months.

We find that when customer buying conditions are highly flexible, case firms use effectual logic to generate customer demand for disruptive innovations. However, under constrained buying conditions firms adopt a more causal approach to customer search.

Managers need to gain a deep understanding of target buying environments when searching for customers. In healthcare sector markets, the degree of flexibility customers have over buying can constrain them from engaging in demand co-creation. In particular, healthcare customer access to funding streams can be a key determinant of customer flexibility.

We contribute to effectuation literature by illustrating how customer buying conditions influence decision-making logics of entrepreneurial firms searching for customers in the healthcare sector. We contribute to entrepreneurial resource search literature by illustrating how entrepreneurial firms search for customers beyond their networks in the institutionally complex healthcare sector.

Brand management has traditionally enlisted visual branding elements, including the brand’s graphic logo, to distinguish and communicate the personality of the brand. However, as healthcare organizations work to shape how consumers perceive their brand, organizations are also enhancing their brand identity with sound and music by creating a sonic brand. This research paper aims to examine how sonic brands influence consumer emotional reactions and trust in a healthcare provider. It also explores how sonic brands can differentially affect consumers, depending on their level of engagement in their physical and mental health.

Two experimental studies were conducted that tested the use of a sonic logo for healthcare providers in consumption contexts that might elicit negative emotions, cancer care and mental health care.

The results suggest that the presence of a sonic logo helped to alleviate negative emotions as well as engender trust in the provider. Findings also revealed that for consumers who are less engaged in their health, a sonic logo served as a peripheral cue by enhancing perceptions of competence and empathy for the healthcare provider.

Findings from this research provide insight into how sonic brands can increase the effectiveness of branded healthcare communications.

The mental healthcare is experiencing an ever-growing surge in understanding the consumer (e.g., patient) engagement paradox, aiming to vouch for the quality of care. Despite this surge, scant attention has been given in academia to conceptualize and empirically investigate this particular aspect. Thus, drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) paradigm, the study explores how patients engage with healthcare service providers and how they perceive the quality of the healthcare services.

Data were collected from 279 respondents, and the derived conceptual model was tested by using Smart PLS 3.2.7 and PROCESS. To complement the findings of partial least squares (PLS)-based structural equation modeling (SEM), the present study also applied fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions to explore substitute conjunctive paths that emerge.

Findings show that patients’ perceived intimacy (PI), cohesion and privacy enhance the quality of mental healthcare service providers. The results also suggest that patients’ PI, cohesion and privacy have indirect effects on the perceived quality of care (PQC) by the service providers through consumer engagement. The fsQCA results derive that the relationship among conditions leading to patients’ perception of the quality of care in regard to mental healthcare service providers is complex and is best reflected as multiple and conjectural causation configurations.

The findings from this research contribute to the advancement of studies on patients’ experiences by empirically examining the unique dynamics of interaction between consumers (patients) and mental healthcare service providers, thereby enriching both the literature on social interactions and the understanding of the consumer–provider relationship.

The results of this study provide practical implications for mental healthcare service providers on how to combine the study variables to enhance the quality of care and satisfy more patients.

A significant research gap has ascertained the inter-relationship between PI, cohesion, privacy, engagement and PQC from the perspective of mental healthcare service providers. This research is one of the primary studies from a managerial and methodological standpoint. The study contributes by combining symmetric and asymmetric statistical tools in service marketing and healthcare research. Furthermore, the application of fsQCA helps to understand the interactions that might not be immediately obvious through traditional symmetric methods.

The purpose of this study is to summarize the available pool of literature on service quality to identify different dimensions of service quality in the healthcare industry and understand how it is measured. The study attempts to explore the research gaps in the literature about different service quality dimensions and patient satisfaction.

A systematic literature review process was followed to achieve the objectives of the study. Various inclusion and exclusion criteria were used to select relevant research articles from 2000–2020 for the study, and a total of 100 research articles were selected.

The study identified 41 different dimensions of healthcare service quality measurement and classified these dimensions into four categories, namely servicescape, personnel, hospital administration and patients. It can be concluded that SERVQUAL is the most widely used service quality measurement tool.

The study identified that a majority of the researchers deduced a positive relationship between SERVQUAL dimensions and the quality of healthcare services. The findings of study will assist hospital executives in formulating effective strategies to ensure that patients receive superior quality healthcare services.

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is one of the key indicators to measure the success or health of an organization. How can an organization assess the organization's customers' lifetime value (LTV) and offer relevant strategies to retain prospective and profitable customers? This study offers an integrated view of different methods for calculating CLVs for both loyalty members and non-membership customers.

This study outlines eleven methods for calculating CLV considering (1) the deterministic aspect of NPV (Net present value) models in both finite and infinite timespans, (2) the geometric pattern and (3) the probabilistic aspect of parameter estimates through simulation modeling along with (4) the migration models for including “the probability that customers will return in the future” as a key input for CLV calculation.

The CLV models are validated in the context of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)in the healthcare industry. The results show that understanding CLV can help the organization develop strategies to retain valuable customers while maintaining profit margins.

The integrated CLV models provide an overview of the mathematical estimation of LTVs depending on the nature of the customers and the business circumstances and can be applied to other business settings.

There is a renewed interest among economists and policymakers in striking a perfect balance between the market, state, and the community for equitable and sustained development. Inclusive development is the need of the hour and healthcare cooperatives provide the perfect means to deliver that. The cooperatives can and should have an important role to play in this scenario. However, there is an important need to provide an enabling environment for the genesis and growth of Healthcare Cooperatives in India and to learn from the best models and practices across the world. The chapter discusses the effectiveness of healthcare cooperatives.

This study aims to map and analyze health-care pricing information research. This work highlights current gap in pricing information research in health care and proposes future research avenues to academia and industry professionals.

A bibliometric method was adopted to analyze extant literature on pricing information asymmetry. Semistructured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders in health care to triangulate the findings.

Pricing information is crucial for all stakeholders including health-care consumers, providers and regulators. The popular research areas were the rising health-care cost, cost-saving, outcome-based pricing, price based on service supply and demand, insurance and out-of-pocket spending. Cost–quality perceived linkages, cost–demand correlation in health-care service and cost–price interlinked drivers were the dominant themes in extant literature. The study highlighted that pricing information asymmetry pushed patients from weaker sections into a debt trap due to unplanned out-of-pocket health-care expenses. The study suggests areas of research to minimize this pricing information asymmetry.

The emerging themes in health pricing asymmetry will help key stakeholders to identify areas for improvement and take remedial actions in the health-care domain.

This study is a pioneering effort to summarize extant literature published in the health-care information pricing domain and analyze it from a bibliometric perspective. The study also triangulates the finding with primary data from key stakeholders and highlights emerging research areas.

The aim of this study is to comprehend the behavioural intention of females' perception toward smart healthcare technology. The study also examines the moderation effect of social influences between perceived smart healthcare technology and perceived usefulness among female users.

To test the model, this study collected data from female respondents (n = 913) responses. The data were analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM) using Smart-PLS 3.2. To complement the findings from structural equation modeling, the study also conducted a post-hoc test via experimental research design. The authors also applied a t-test and PROCESS macro analysis to re-confirm the relationship mentioned above.

The findings revealed that perceived ease of use significantly mediates the relationship between females' perceived smart healthcare technology and intention to use. The findings also show that social influence moderates between smart healthcare technology and the perceived usefulness relationship.

Social influence is one of the major issues while adopting smart healthcare technology because the respondents perceived that they are accustomed to the technologies related to smart health once their surroundings and social environment influence them.

The current study is a pioneer in the context of a developing country and unique in that it makes two contributions: it extends previous research on smart health technology adoption in the healthcare business by considering females, and it gives a broad knowledge of the female healthcare consumers from emerging nations which can be useful for developing technology-driven healthcare services strategies.

This study examines how service feedback and physician popularity affect physician demand in the context of virtual healthcare environment. Based on the signaling theory, the critical factor of environment uncertainty (i.e. disease risk) and its impact on physician demand is also investigated. Further, the research on the endogeneity of online reviews in healthcare is also examined in the current study.

A secondary data econometric analysis using 3-wave data sets of 823 physicians obtained from two PRWs (Healthgrades and Vitals) was conducted. The analysis was run using the difference-in-difference method to consider physician and website-specific effects.

The study's findings indicate that physician popularity has a stronger positive effect on physician demand compared with service feedback. Improving popularity leads to a relative increase in the number of appointments, which in turn enhance physician demand. Further, the impact of physician popularity on physician demand is positively mitigated by the disease risk.

The authors' research contributes to a better understanding of the signaling transmission mechanism in the online healthcare environment. Further, the findings provide practical implications for key stakeholders into how an efficient feedback and popularity mechanism can be built to enhance physician service outcomes in order to maximize the financial efficiency of physicians.