Abstract
Reputations of hospitals were traditionally built on the successful treatment of patients, but today advertising and promotions are used by hospitals as they brand themselves. Patients have become customers, and they are enticed by packaged rates and freebies. Hospitals are operating like airlines, advertising their special offers, package rates, and comfortable services. This approach begs the question: Is a hospital a brand like Gucci, which few can afford, or does it have a larger purpose in society? This chapter argues for hospitals to serve society. Their real branding must come from how they serve patients and not from advertising. The chapter draws on the success of the Aravind Eye Hospital and Narayana Hrudayalaya in India, which have adopted a Walmart approach to reduce costs of complex medical procedures, serving the larger society. Such hospitals represent highly successful branding that draws from an ethical rather than a marketing approach that arises from a genuine desire to fulfill human needs rather than frills and fancies that marketing practitioners are familiar with.
TopBackground
Branding is a well-known construct that is commonly studied in marketing. Much of the effort in branding goes into creating names and logos and making them widely visible so that consumers can distinguish one from the others. The focus is on high-powered communication to make names recognisable. The methods of services marketing are mistakenly applied to hospital branding, which seems logical, as hospitals come under the services category. Thus hospital ads talk about their ambience, smiling models posing as doctors, the latest machines, and more happy models posing as patients.
Marketing books talk about building brands with powerful identities, employing imagery and logos. Hospitals have learnt to use the elements described by Keller (1998) in what is known as Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) Model. This consists of defining a brand’s salience or identity, brand meaning consisting of performance and imagery, consumer response through judgements and feelings, and brand relationships.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Ethical Branding: Branding that matches with the core purpose of the brand, that is, they are created not just by creating an image, but through actions which speak the sincerity of the brand.
Branding: The creation of a unique identity of a product by marketing efforts consisting of an image that is recognizable and distinct from others.
Walmart Approach: The simplifying of processes and deploying technology, along with scaling up of businesses so as to reduce costs of goods and services.
Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) Model: A branding model proposed by Keller which consists of defining a brand’s salience or identity, brand meaning consisting of performance and imagery, consumer response through judgements and feelings, and brand relationships.
Social Business: A social business is defined as a business that has social objectives as its primary purpose. The profits made by social businesses are reinvested for the benefits to society and the environment.
Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) Markets: Markets consisting of a very large but the poorest section of population, living on less than $2.50 a day.