Marketing is a complex endeavor that accounts for various factors in order to succeed within a designated business setting. The so-called marketing mix, or a foundation model for any organization, comprises eight primary constituents: product, price, place, promotion, people, principle, process, and performance (Reny & Prasada, 2018). As far as the healthcare sector is considered, some business owners fail to recognize healthcare products as a marketing tool, as it primarily works not for the sake of profitability. For this reason, nowadays, researchers aim at transcreation of the initial marketing mix according to the sector’s values, comprising product, price, place, promotion, people, process, physical evidence, packaging, partnership, and policy (Lim, 2021). However, despite the existing discrepancies, the core values and principles of marketing are somehow homogenous for health care and other sectors.
The first critical principle for the health care market is people, as human lives are assets to the whole sector. The modern tendencies in clinical practice shift from evidence and medicine-based approaches to the patient-centered focus, creating the demand for personalized marketing services (Agarwal et al., 2020). The second significant principle in today’s context is, by all means, the notion of product, as the final product in terms of health care may vary from a medical device to a positive patient outcome and recovery from a physical condition. As a result, this principle encompasses process and performance as key indicators of a quality outcome.
The third relevant principle is price, as financing care is one of the most challenging aspects of health care today. For this reason, modern approaches to marketing should promote price reasonability, realistic price expectations, and transparency in terms of medical services charging (Agarwal et al., 2020). Finally, the notion of principle is of paramount importance to health care, as it ensures the providers’ intentions exist beyond profitability and benefit. Having considered all the aforementioned principles, one may conclude that while some medical providers may prioritize some principles of the marketing mix, none of them shall be abandoned entirely.
References
Agarwal, R., Dugas, M., Gao, G. G., & Kannan, P. K. (2020). Emerging technologies and analytics for a new era of value-centered marketing in healthcare. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 48(1), 9-23.
Lim, W. M. (2021). A marketing mix typology for integrated care: The 10 Ps. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 29(5), 453-469.
Reny, A., & Prasada, P. B. (2018). The influence of marketing mix (8’ps) on purchasing decision of Indonesia life insurance company. In Conference Proceedings Jakarta Indonesia, ICABE 2018 (pp. 446-458).