Advertising is a form of communication that organizations use to create awareness about their products and services. Organizations depend on different forms of advertising to ensure that their products or services reach the target market. Advertising is a form of marketing strategy whereby organizations rely on print and non-print media to encourage and educate their audience on why they should purchase a specific product or use a given service. Health service advertising aims at assisting healthcare organizations to promote health education and create awareness about certain diseases and effective intervention strategies for these diseases. According to Khang et al. (2012), healthcare organizations use advertising and promotional strategies to reach their clients or potential patients. Therefore, through advertising healthcare organizations can inform their audience about the available treatment options, discounts or the advantages of accessing specific products and items provided in certain healthcare facilities. Thus, advertising acts as a communication strategy between health facilities and their clients.
Advantages of Health Services Adverting
Health service advertising enables health organizations to connect with their potential clients as people learn more about the services offered in a medical facility. Institutions that offer health services are in business to ensure that they can provide quality services and care while at the same time increase their market share and revenue income. Thus, hospitals and other medical facilities in the health industry are competing to increase their market share by serving as many customers as possible. The competition in the health industry is based on both the cost effectiveness of the services rendered and the quality of care provided. Therefore, health facilities have to invest their time, money and resources to ensure that they can achieve their organizational goals and generate the desired results. Thus, through advertising health organizations are able to create awareness and make their presence felt in the market.
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Advertising allows healthcare providers to form a strong relationship with their clients through networking. Networking is an essential part of any business that allows the business owners to increase their market share as well as grow their revenue income. According to Radu et al. (2017), promoting medical care allows patients and health care providers to network. Through the networking process, health institutions can identify various ways in which they can improve their services and care approaches to meet the needs of their patients. As a result, the health facilities can improve the quality of health services, which will ensure that patients are satisfied and increase the probability of them recommending the services of the health service. By implementing an effective healthcare marketing strategy, health institutions can enhance the connection they have with their patients and attract new clients. Furthermore, an increased patient population implies that an institution is making more profits.
Health service advertising creates clarity and prevents patients from being misinformed. The strategies used in healthcare marketing allow physicians to share their expertise through the advertising or promotional channel used and counter any incorrect information that might be in the market. In addition to this, healthcare advertising enables patients to identify physicians that can serve their needs. Schwartz (2019), affirm that through advertising, medical physicians have been able to showcase the services and products that make them unique, which helps the patient to make an informed decision about the physician they are interested in. Thus, through advertising patients are connected to doctors that have the ability and resources to treat them.
Disadvantages of Health Service Advertising
Some healthcare providers are against the idea of health services advertising and deem it to be an inappropriate way of self-promoting. Some healthcare institutions and physicians use advertising as a way of manipulating their patients and increase their revenue income. Schenker et al. (2014), argues that some pharmaceutical industries use direct to consumer advertising as a way of increasing their sales as the main target as opposed. This form of advertising is unethical as companies might use false advertising to attract consumers into buying their products. Despite the use of disclaimers when adverting medical products and services, majority of the organizations that advertise their health services are biased – since they are mainly inclined towards promoting the positive aspects of their products. As a result, consumers may be deceived by the promotional strategies used.
Health services advertising strategies are used to increase the consumer demand for the advertised products; thus, creating an emotional response and expectations among consumers. The emotional and conditional responses from consumers may increase the effectiveness of the medication outside of what was projected. As a result, the patient may deter from seeking further medical examination or help; thus, preventing them from seeking extensive treatment as requested by their physician. Therefore, patients may opt to heavily rely on the messages communicated through advertising when selecting a treatment option or medication as opposed to seeking professional help and an extensive medical examination.
Advertising in the healthcare industry can cause harmful effects among patients. For instances, some patients may consider self-medicating themselves according to what the message conveyed through advertising as opposed to seeking proper medical assistance. For example, patients may opt to use over the counter drugs that they have in the house to treat some of the symptoms they are experiencing based on the advertisement message conveyed. The language used in advertising is persuasive and coercive and patients may misinterpret some of the symptoms discussed in the advertisement for what they are experiencing. As a result, patients may end up using the wrong medication or visiting the wrong physician due to poor interpretation of the marketing message conveyed in an advertisement.
Personal Opinion on Health Service Advertising
Although health service advertising is aimed at connecting patients with healthcare service providers it might have detrimental effects on the consumers. From the above discussion the benefits of health service advertising prove that marketing in the healthcare industry streamlines the relationship between service providers and patients. Through marketing both physicians and patients have benefitted from advertising – since health institutions gain competitive advantage, increase their revenue income and market share; whereas the patients can make informed decisions before visiting a physician or purchasing a drug. However, the negative effects of healthcare advertising resulting from poor choices and unethical motivations can lead to fatal outcomes. It is for this reason that health service advertising should be condemned. Although advertising aims at informing the patients and creating awareness, health service advertising for the purpose of promoting drugs can influence consumers into making poor health choices. Furthermore, health service advertising can be considered as an unethical act since most of the advertising agencies mainly focus on how they can use promotional strategies to help an organization in increasing its profits.
When health service advertising are used for the purpose of increasing sales such as in the pharmaceutical industry as opposed to providing holistic care it corrupts the ethical standards of health institutions. Schenker et al. (2014) asserts that health service advertising is a risky affair when evaluating it against the moral obligations of the health care institutions. As a result, it is important for the health industry to put in place effective mechanisms that can regulate the adverting for prescription drugs and apply them more broadly.
Conclusion
Health service advertising is a risk affair that may lead to wrong decisions caused by the message conveyed by the advertising agent. It is therefore, mandatory for healthcare officials to implement advertising standards that regulate how health care organizations implement their promotional services and attract consumers to using their services as well as buying their products.
References
Khang, H., Ki, E. J., & Ye, L. (2012). Social media research in advertising, communication, marketing, and public relations, 1997–2010. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly , 89 (2), 279-298.
Radu, G., Solomon, M., Gheorghe, C. M., Hostiuc, M., Bulescu, I. A., & Purcarea, V. L. (2017). The adaptation of health care marketing to the digital era. Journal of medicine and life , 10 (1), 44–46.
Schenker, Y., Arnold, R. & London, J. (2014) The Ethics of Advertising for Health Care Services, The American Journal of Bioethics , 14:3, 34-43, DOI: 10.1080/15265161.2013.879943
Schwartz, L. M. (2019). Woloshin S. Medical Marketing in the United States, 1997-2016. JAMA ;321(1):80–96. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.19320
