MARKETING IN THE HEALTH CARE

Marketing in the Health Care Sector at both international level



Marketing in the Health Care Sector at both international level

Task one

Introduction

A paradigm shift is taking place in services marketing - there is a shift from a transaction-oriented “marketing mix” view of exchanges to a relationship marketing view (Gummesson, 2002), i.e. focus is turning away from how to acquire new customers to how to develop, enhance, maintain and terminate long-lasting relationships. Emphasis on service quality and customer relationship orientation issues has gained increasing importance in all industries, including the primary health care industry within the National Health Service (NHS) (Grol et al., 2002). The appearance of The New NHS: Modern, Dependable (Department of Health, 1997), A First Class Service: Quality in the New NHS (Department of Health, 1998), Clinical Governance (Department of Health, 1999) and The NHS Plan (Department of Health, 2000) put quality at the top of the NHS agenda, emphasising quality at all levels. This brought quality to the forefront of political, professional and managerial attention. Patients are no longer patients: rather, they are the consumers of health services. The primary health care industry needs to understand how health is affected by the social aspects of service provision and relationships within general practice, and to develop strategies to make health care service more efficient and effective. Relationship marketing can provide a way forward for this transition.

In response to the increasing quality expectations of both patients and professionals, Delivering the NHS Plan (Department of Health, 2002) called for the health care industry to demonstrate more business-like practices (Robinson and Lefort, 2000). According to Schyve (2000) quality approaches initially developed for other industries hold promise for improving performance and quality within the health care industry. Various business philosophies, like total quality management (Jackson, 2001), and the European Foundation of Quality Management (Stahr, 2001) have been implemented successfully in the health care industry. Additionally, there is a growing acceptance that marketing tools could and should be applied to the health care sector (Willcocks and Conway, 2000). A number of researchers have been concentrating their studies on the application of marketing and the concepts of perceived quality and satisfaction to public services in health care (Andaleeb, 2001; Lupton, 1997). Marketing is no longer just a commercial tool aimed at developing, selling and delivering products for financial gain. It is increasingly more concerned with the development and maintenance of mutually satisfying long-term relationships with consumers (Buttle, 1996) and has been successfully applied to sectors and organisations in which the major motive for existence is not profit. Willcocks and Conway (2000) have applied the relationship marketing perspective to primary care groups in the NHS, providing insight into the importance of developing and sustaining relationships among a diverse range of stakeholders. According to the relationship paradigm, especially the Nordic school of thought, marketing revolves around the development of long-term relationships.

This paper addresses an area which will further the understanding of service delivery in the non-profit, resource-constrained conditions of general practice within the ...