Healthcare Marketing: An Empirical Study among Lebanese Hospitals

Although most of studies have identified different dynamic factors that influence hospitals business development, there is always an increasing interest to find the best practices that ensure effective and sustainable marketing strategies in healthcare. The purpose of this study was to make an approach between patients and hospital managers to develop an effective marketing strategy for hospitals in Lebanon. A quantitative methodology was applied to statistically test both patients and managers’ attitudesthrough conducting two different simple surveys among patients and managers from fourdifferent hospitals in Lebanon. Self-administered questionnaires were designed in terms of marketing mix and hospitalization experience, and distributed randomly among participants to assess the implemented marketing strategies.Majority of patients were satisfied from the healthcare service provided and 93.3% of patients showed high level of loyalty to these hospitals. In terms of experiencing the marketing mix, majorityof patients were able to identify the most significant 7ps in hospitals especially in terms of price and people. Similarly, the results obtained from managers’ surveyshowed consistency of the marketing strategies applied by these hospitals with the patients’ attitudesbut with some conservation regarding the pricing strategies in the Lebanese healthcare system.The importance of healthcare marketing falls mainly in the framework of strengthening public relations with patients and maintaining a proper pricing strategy that is backed by the government and mediated by the guarantors. Future studies can be extended empirically in terms of geographical distribution of hospitals and the methodology applied.