Marketing in the national health service: Prospects and variants

With the implementation of an internal market in the UK National Health Service (NHS), interest in marketing NHS services is growing. Yet marketing practice in other sectors of the economy, and the experience of other markets in health care, raise doubts and objections as to whether marketing should be introduced in the NHS at all. Some of these objections have force, and there are important structural differences between the NHS internal market and conventional markets. Simply copying conventional marketing methods is therefore unlikely to be an effective, or even a desirable, approach to marketing in the NHS. Specific forms of marketing are required for the NHS and these forms differ for purchasing organizations, for commercialized health care providers (including NHS trusts), and for directly‐managed NHS services. Differences between these variants can be illustrated by considering the different ways in which a generic model of marketing would have to be amended for each case. The differences also suggest some policy and managerial parameters for the future development of NHS marketing.