Effective marketing tool for the marketing professionals in healthcare organization: The 4 ‘S’ model

ABSTRACT

Patients are becoming more demanding for the medical service delivery as organizations are continuously innovating new ways of service delivery. Irrespective of the number of services being provided, the demand for marketing support in the healthcare organization is growing. The number of hospitals with marketing department has increased by 75% in 3 years’ time, which is partly due to increased competitive pressure. With more investments in the healthcare, there is comparatively more expectation from the promoters in terms of better returns of investment and that boils down to more pressure on marketing activities of the organization. In such situation marketing associates including entry-level professionals face a daunting task to justify the growth in market share and securing higher budget for the marketing activities. To make their function more effective, a 4 ‘S’ model is devised which captures the basic marketing information like Size, Shape, Share and Soar, which every marketer need to have before any marketing planning. Since the information needed for effective marketing plans for medical services is critical, the 4 ‘S’ model brings a template-based tool to facilitate better understanding of the market and thus better strategy for the organization.

KEYWORDS:

• Entry-level marketing professionals
• hospital marketing
• 4 ‘S’ model
• medical service marketing tool

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Biranchi Jena is currently working as a professor in Health Economics and Marketing at Symbiosis University, Pune. He also consultants on performance management for healthcare projects of Tata Trust. Dr Jena is the former Director of IIHMR Bangalore and worked in senior positions in corporations like Novartis and Novo Nordisk.