MARKETING FORCES AND DIVERSIFICATION

Marketing Forces and Diversification

Marketing Forces and Diversification

Hospital Market Orientation

Marketing is an important activity of modern healthcare organizations in many countries. To survive and succeed, organizations should experience their markets, attract sufficient sources, convert these resources into appropriate services, plus communicate them to a variety of consuming public. In the hospital industry, a marketing orientation is presently recognized as a essential management function in a highly competitive as well as resource-constrained environment. The marketing orientation is posited to contribute to greater customer satisfaction plus improved business results, as well as to drive hospitals to focus more on cost control. The number of attempts to compare the service quality of health care organizations on the basis of marketing orientation in Bulgaria is still not enough(Lagoe, 2005).

One of the instruments that could be used in order to manage successfully the new challenges and be able to achieve a sustainable profitability position in the market for health care and services is Hospital Marketing, fact also sustained by the positive results encountered in many hospitals, where the modern marketing tools have been successfully implemented. The achievement of the desired effects by making use of these instruments implies the necessity of getting rid of old behavior patterns and of modifying the structures both in the hospitals and in the whole health care market (Lagoe, 2005). The postulate of orientation at the implicit market functions will determine also the future of those hospitals that are still against any form of market openness and orientation or of those, whose leaders want neither to consider the happening market changes nor to react adequately. Hospital Marketing includes following categories and will elementary change the process structure and operations:

1. The dimensions of Hospital Marketing: service-mix, access-mix, consideration-mix and promotion- mix.

2. The legal principles and conditions ...