POSITIONING OF HEALTH CARE SERVICE: EXAMINATION OF THE ADVERTISEMENTS AND STAKEHOLDER PERCEPTIONS

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Access to quality health care is one of the most pressing issues the nation is facing today and intricately interwoven in the debate is the advertising for the professional services provided by physicians and hospitals. The concerns about health care service advertising are founded on the notion that health care is fundamentally different from other commodities or services and thus the conventional, market-based distribution of the limited resources can be problematic. Also raised are the issues related to information asymmetry between health care service providers and the public. Advocates of a market-based health economy, on the other hand, argue that advertising helps health service consumers by bringing down prices and increasing choices. However, little empirical evidence exists to support or rebuke the claims purported by either side. It is also unclear what degrees of concern or ambivalence exists among health care professionals about the advertisements and how much, if any, health care service marketers are aware of the tension. Research on consumers' health care service advertising literacy is scarce, although they are often directly targeted by the advertisements for highly technical and often very costly services. This research will enhance health care marketing education and practice by generating concrete knowledge and evidence. In addition, the current study will lay a groundwork for health care service consumer education by gauging public understanding of the advertising messages. Ultimately, this research will illuminate how health care service advertisements can be deployed to spur healthy competition without wasting health care resources and compromising the doctor-patient relationship, and thus contribute to the enhanced wellbeing of individuals and communities.In examining the content of health care service advertisements and perceptions and attitudes of the stakeholders, this research employs positioning theory, a framework for analyzing strategic communication of organizations, to better understand the relationships among the positions taken by the stakeholders, the messages conveyed through the advertisements, and the narratives about the relationship between the medical profession and society. The proposed study has three objectives: 1) To systematically analyze the content of health care service advertisements to capture a comprehensive and accurate picture of current health care service advertising practices; 2) To map and assess the positions of physicians, consumers, and health care marketers regarding the practices, aims, responsibilities, and ethical issues unique to the advertisements; 3) To advance positioning theory as an analytical framework for the strategic communication of organizations. To meet the objectives, content analysis of health care service advertisements, surveys of physicians and health care marketers, and a consumer focus group will be conducted.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.