ams designed to influence the acceptance of social ideas that take into account considerations based on planning, pricing and other marketing precepts. Social marketing, according to Zaltman and Vertinsky, extends to both marketing organizations and to social problem-oriented agencies.
Zaltman and Vertinsky use a model based on their experiences in Latin America to build their arguments. This model focuses on nutrition and the improvement of general health practices in order to draw conclusions about the applicability of marketing concepts to the health industry.
More than 20 years later after this article first appeared, health care has become one of the foremost areas of concerns for most Americans. The use of marketing principles, including pricing and promotion, is critical to the reform efforts currently underway in the nation, and the authors( belief that such principles can be applied to the healthcare system has indeed been borne out.
Ireland, Richard C. (Marketing: A New Opportunity for Hospital Management.( In Cooper, Philip D., ed. Health Care Marketing: Issues and Trends. Rockville, MD: Royal Turnbridge Wells, 1985, 38-46.
Ireland presents the outline for a marketing program that can be applied to hospitals, and suggests that hospitals have, until recently, ignored the marketing orientation that their industry should have. This marketing orientation grows from the overriding mission of hospitals, which is to provide quality health care to the people in the local area. Put in marketing terms, this would be to provide a quality service to the target market.
Ireland spends a considerable amount of the chapter focusing on why hospitals need to adopt a more aggressive marketing program, and how doing so does not take them away from their core mission, but instead enhances it. The beginning of the marketing program that Ireland suggests, therefore, is for the hospital administrators to understand what th...