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Basics of Marketing - Kotler Philip

Chapter 19. Marketing services and marketing in the field of non-commercial activities

Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Define the notion of "service" and talk about the four features inherent in the marketing of services.

2. Explain why and how organizations are engaged in self-marketing.

3. Tell you why you need marketing for individuals and places.

4. Correlate the four components of the marketing mix (product, price, distribution and incentive methods) with a public marketing campaign.

Hospitals use advertising to attract patients

The Evanston Hospital, which serves the North Shore of Chicago, appointed Dr. John McClaren as his first vice president of marketing. Previously, the posts of vice-presidents for development and work on organizing public opinion had already met in hospitals, but this appointment was surprising in many people both inside the hospital and outside it.

Until 1970, hospitals suffered from an excess of patients. But in the early 1970s the situation radically changed - the sick began to arrive less, the number of man-days of loading beds was reduced. With high fixed costs and rising labor costs, a reduction in the contingent of patients can mean a shift from profitability to loss.

Hospitals have begun feverishly to find ways to attract as much of the available patients as possible. Since most patients go to the hospital in which their attending physician works, the main goal of market activity has been the impact on practitioners. Hospitals began to think about attracting as many "high-performing" doctors as possible to their staff. The main part was to know what exactly practitioners want - say, to have the latest equipment, pleasant surroundings of fellow doctors and nurses, to associate oneself with a hospital that has a solid image.

The more hospitals were thinking about this problem, the more complex marketing tasks they posed were. It was necessary to investigate the needs of communities in the field of health care, identify images of competing hospitals, represent patients about hospital care, etc. Hospitals began to realize that they were no longer able to offer all kinds of medical care at once, as this led to costly duplication of equipment and Services and incomplete use of available opportunities. And hospitals began to consciously specialize as cardiological, pediatric, burn, psychiatric.

At the same time, some hospitals began to go to great lengths to attract patients. Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas has published a large ad with a picture of the ship and the title "Sunrise Cruise" - to win a ticket to this unique cruise, simply go to Sunrise Hospital on any Friday or Saturday. Win a ticket to a cruise for convalescents On the Mediterranean Sea for two persons. "St. Luke's Hospital in Phoenix began every evening for all its patients (except for cardiological patients) playing bingo, which aroused great interest from patients and ensured an annual income of $ 60,000. One of the Philadelphia Hospitals began to arrange for parents of newborn dinners with candles with steaks from the tenderloin and champagne.

What, then, is the sense of the work of Dr. J. McLaren in the Evanston hospital? Its mission is to promote specific types of hospital services (service marketing), to promote the hospital as a whole (marketing of the organization), to popularize some of the leading doctors (marketing individuals), to popularize the place of Evanston as an attractive district (market place) and to promote ideas for maintaining good health Marketing ideas).

As a separate discipline, marketing initially arose in relation to the sale of real products such as toothpaste, cars, steel, equipment. Focusing on the product in its material form can lead to the fact that a person will lose sight of many other types of goods sold in the market, such as services, organizations, individuals, places and ideas.