Healthcare Marketing Quiz

Chapter 6: Healthcare Marketing

• Healthcare marketing is defined as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society.

• Chapter objectives include defining marketing, understanding the progression to a market-oriented organization, explaining the link between strategic management and healthcare marketing, explaining marketing management functions and defining marketing terms (e.g., market segmentation, target marketing, marketing mix, positioning).

Chapter Objectives (Continued)

• Objectives also include evaluating consumer behavior in healthcare, differentiating marketing approaches, explaining how managers integrate ethics and social responsibility, and creating marketing tactics like social media use aligned with organizational goals.

Key Concepts

• Strategic marketing is crucial in healthcare.
• Marketing is a vital management function within healthcare organizations.
• Effective marketing approaches focus on creating, communicating, and delivering value.
• A marketing mix and plan form part of the healthcare marketing framework.

Who Is the Customer?

• Customers are purchasers of products, services, and ideas.
• In healthcare, the customer can be the decision-maker, ultimate consumer, or payer.

Historical Perspective

• Before the 1980s, healthcare marketing didn't exist.

• Reasons given for the absence include questions about its ethics, lack of consumer focus, and concerns it might induce demand.

What is Marketing?

• The American Marketing Association (2007) defines marketing as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

What is Marketing? (Continued)

• Marketing plays a central role in fulfilling customer needs.
• Marketing activities build sustainable, value-driven systems for customers, stakeholders, and society.
• Organizations focused on marketing are dedicated to establishing long-term customer relationships leading to superior performance.

Strategic Marketing Factors

• Controllable factors consist of the 4 Ps (product, price, place, promotion).
• Uncontrollable external factors include political, economic, social/cultural, technological, regulatory, and competitive forces.

Key Stakeholders

• Key stakeholders include customers, board of directors, suppliers, physicians, employees, and society at large.

Uncontrollable Environment

• The uncontrollable environment encompasses political, economic, social/cultural, technological, regulatory, and competitive factors.

Strategic Marketing Strategy Process Framework

• This framework identifies critical elements essential for strategic healthcare marketing. Elements include Organization Purpose, Industry Analysis, Core Strategy, Organization Analysis, Target Market, Competitive Positioning, Differential Advantage, Implementation, Evaluation & Control, and Continuous Improvement.

Marketing Management

• Healthcare marketing management involves selecting target markets, creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers, achieving long-term, sustainable competitive advantage.

Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning (STP)

• Segmentation divides the market into groups with similar needs.
• Targeting selects specific segments with a concentration or multi-segment strategy.
• Positioning differentiates a brand and offerings in the target market's mind.

Organizational vs. Consumer Focus

• Organizational behavior focuses on organizational buyers, such as employers purchasing health insurance.
• Consumer behavior concerns consumer decisions about goods, services, time and ideas; a patient selecting a surgeon.

Marketing Plan

• Marketing plans are written documents guiding marketing initiatives across organizations.
• These plans are embedded within the broader strategic plan with a long term view.
• Specific tactical marketing activities within a plan are short-term goals, developed annually or biannually.

Social Marketing and Cause-Related Marketing

• Social marketing uses commercial principles to bring about behavioral changes in a specific target audience.
• Cause-related marketing links a company to societal issues to build brand image and increase profitability.

Ethics and Social Responsibility

• Ethical considerations in healthcare marketing encompass three levels: individual (consumer wellbeing), organizational (goals), and societal (public health).

A Sampling of Research Sources

• Several organizations are mentioned as sources of research data for healthcare marketing including, Balanced Scorecard Institute, Dartmouth Atlas of Healthcare, Sg2 Healthcare Intelligence, American Hospital Association, Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, and Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development.

Conclusion

• Healthcare organizations employ marketing to create, communicate, and deliver value through mutually beneficial relationships.
• Managers should seek help from experts like marketing specialists, strategic planners, advertising agencies, and public relations specialists.

Test your knowledge on strategic marketing concepts related to healthcare. This quiz covers topics such as market targeting, consumer behavior, and the impact of ethics in healthcare marketing strategies. Challenge yourself with questions about cause-related marketing and the evolution of marketing perception in the healthcare industry.