Marketing is the means through which businesses and organizations get to their customers. It’s basically a means of communication in which the seller gets to attract more customers or consumers to buy his/her products and services. It entails informing the customers what is unique about your products or services and why they should chose them over others that serve the same purpose (Jobber et al., 2012). In most cases, marketing focuses on the value and quality of the products and services being offered.
A strategic plan on the other hand refers to a manuscript with objectives and procedures which a business or an organization needs to undertake in order to achieve its set goals. Ethical refers to a set of rules or standards that determine whether an action is right or wrong. Mostly ethics is used in reference to conduct or behaviors of certain professions or businesses. In health care, I consider it unethical for an organization to carry out marketing or have a strategic plan whose main objective is to cause a competitor to go out of business. Businesses always offer quality services and products when there is competition unlike when it operates alone or operating in a monopoly. Healthcare organization should there embrace and encourage competition in their marketing by focusing on improving the quality of their healthcare services rather than spending much of their time in trying to eliminate a competitor out of the healthcare business.
Healthcare marketing should therefore focus more on the needs and expectations of their consumers i.e. patients (Hirsch, 2015). For example in carrying out marketing, healthcare providers should put more emphasis on what will convince patients to buy their products and services by fully understanding their decision making criteria. This is basically because patients perform a background research of hospitals and their doctors as well as their medical practices and compare them with what other hospitals offer by having a look of what other patients or consumers say about them. They then make a decision to visit a hospital that best meets their expectations. Such decision making processes can be greatly influenced by marketing. It will therefore be very crucial if healthcare provider pay more attention to the reputation of their organization (Hirsch, 2015).
References
Jobber, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2012). Principles and practice of marketing(No. 7th). McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Lonnie Hirsch. (2015). Defining a Buyer Persona for Healthcare Marketing. Retrieved from http://www.healthcaresuccess.com/blog/healthcare-marketing/defining-a-buyer-persona-for-healthcare-marketing.html
