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Health care is vital to our interconnected world and, as demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, societies are deeply affected by its successes and failings. Over the last decade, health care has been disrupted on both the demand and supply sides, and these changes have impacted the creation, provision, and consumption of health care in fundamental ways.
From: Christine Moorman, Harald J. van Heerde, C. Page Moreau, and Robert W. Palmatier, “Marketing in the Health Care Sector: Disrupted Exchanges and New Research Directions,” Journal of Marketing.
This editorial is part of the special issue, “Marketing in the Health Care Sector.” More information about the issue is available here.
We identify initial potential impacts of these disrupted exchanges on three outcomes:
- The health-enhancing impact refers to the degree to which mental and physical health outcomes might be improved.
- The choice-empowering impact refers to the degree to which consumers have an actual or perceived improvement in their ability and motivation to understand and make health-related choices. One concern is that more information does not always equate to better choices.
- The competition-inducing impact refers to the degree to which the change fosters competition that improves quality, increases access, and lowers prices. We find that these competitive effects are determined by whether consumers use new health care exchanges as substitutes or complements. If used as substitutes, disrupted exchanges may spur competition. If used as complements, the effects may be minimal or they may produce beneficial partnerships in the industry.
C. Page Moreau is John R. Nevin Professor of Marketing, University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA.
Health care providers deliver information, products, and services to consumers. These providers also come in two categories—traditional providers that include doctors, nurses, hospitals, and health centers as well as new providers that include retail health care providers, complementary and alternative health care providers, and physician influencers who preach their health gospel to the marketplace.
However, the role of marketing in this dynamic health care industry remains only partially understood and is often focused on conventional strategies such as business-to-business transactions (e.g., detailing or advertising to doctors) and business-to-consumer transactions (e.g., direct-to-consumer advertising). While important, this limited view ignores the new actors, roles, and exchanges that characterize disrupted health care markets. As a result, the health care sector is not acting on the full range of opportunities associated with these changes, including understanding their effects on consumer welfare.