A framework for preventive health marketing

ABSTRACT

Preventive health is a key, yet nascent, area in health marketing that deserves greater attention in order to fullfil its promise for improving public health. This paper aims to contribute toward this cause by developing and testing a framework for preventive health marketing. To do so, this paper employs the Health Belief Model (HBM) as a theoretical lens, health screening as a case of preventive health, and structural equation modelling on cross-sectional survey data from 326 consumers. In doing so, this paper finds that preventive health behavior (i.e., desire and intention to attend and recommend health screening) is predominantly influenced by consumers’ efficacy (i.e., perceived benefits and barriers of health screening), social (i.e., subjective norm), and personal (i.e., perceived health importance), but not threat (e.g., perceived susceptibility and severity of health screening), beliefs of preventive health. This paper also finds that preventive health behavior may be significantly influenced by a number of preventive health externalities, such as affordability and cultural orientation. These findings, as a whole, contribute to a nuanced understanding of preventive health behavior for preventive health marketing.

KEYWORDS:

• Health belief model
• health marketing
• health screening
• preventive health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).