The efficiency of marketing strategies in health care - using social vouchers and coupons

Abstract

Introduction: Marketing strategies in the field of health care represent the health care organizations’ attitude towards the marketing environment and also their conduct in relation to its components. In this case, the product being sold is the medical service provided to the patient.Purpose of study: The purpose was to determine the efficiency of social voichers and coupons for marketing strategies.Methods:  We have conducted a retrospective study using 2 groups of patients .In group A were included 220 patients of a dental clinic who have received 330 vouchers with 25% discount with the purpose of promoting medical services, by four different marketing strategies (E- mail, websites, distribution of coupons in the dental office and office area).In group B, 124 people were included, who have acquired vouchers through the internet for a free consultation and dental scaling. 142 vouchers were sold and 124 patients turned up, with an average age of 32.1 years. The 220 patients from group A were asked to complete a four-question survey, which allowed us to evaluate the effectiveness of the applied strategies. After the dental appointment, 97 patients from the group B were informed they require further treatment.Findings and results: The patients' response to recommendations was the marker for evaluating the marketing strategies.Conclusions: There are many marketing strategies. Through this study we wanted to evaluate their effectiveness in the case of a private medical practice, aiming to obtain patients’ loyalty, to increase the number of patients and performed treatments. We consider that the significant number of enrolled patients gives the study relevancy, analysing various promoting techniques.

Keywords: marketing strategies, dental clinic, coupons, vouchers, discount, patients