Write a 4- to 5-page scholarly position essay in which you assess the value of branding in
health care.
1.Specifically, under what circumstances do you feel that it is beneficial for health care
organizations to use branding?
2.Can the use of branding have unexpected negative consequences? Explain in detail.
Assignment Expectations
You will be expected to:
1.Provide a scholarly basis for your response.
2.Justify your opinions with evidence from the literature.
3.Cite several scholarly references in your essay.
4.Properly cite all references in the text of your essay (either in parentheses or in
footnotes), as well as at the end.
525 CASE 3
Many healthcare organizations today use branding to a large extent to market their
products and services. Evans, Blitstein, and Nielsen (2015) define branding as a marketing
strategy implemented by organizations to help build a connection between customers and the
services they offer. Healthcare organizations use branding to build customer loyalty and to
enhance awareness of their products and services in the market. Therefore, through branding,
healthcare organizations can relate well with the public. In some cases, organizations within the
health care industry can use branding to build their identities internally and to help employees to
have a comprehensive understanding of the companies that they work for. Many health care
organizations have witnessed the positive impacts of branding on their operations. For this
525 CASE 3 2
reason, they continue to invest in activities that are aimed at strengthening their brands
(Snihurowych, Cornelius, and Amelung, 2009).
Health care organizations should know the circumstances under which they should
implement branding as a marketing strategy. These organizations should understand that
branding may not be a useful marketing strategy at all times despite the fact there may be some
positive impacts associated with it. There are two different circumstances under which it would
be beneficial for health care organization to use branding. The circumstances include; when a
new product or service has just been released into the market, and when an organization wants to
improve customer loyalty towards an already existing product or service (Acton, 1998).
When using branding either to build product awareness or to create customer loyalty, health care
organizations are always influenced by the need to; remain competitive, fulfill the strategic
mission, and increase market share. In this regard, branding helps health care organization to fit
in the highly competitive business environments, achieve their vision and mission, and to attract
potential customers who can purchase the care that they deliver (Snihurowych, Cornelius, and
Amelung, 2009). According to Snihurowych, Cornelius and Amelung (2009), highly competitive
health care organizations always strive to remain competitive because they believe that standing
out in the industry will enable them to reduce health care costs. This is because business
inefficiencies such as high production costs are greatly eliminated by competition. While
focusing on competition during branding, the goal that health care organizations are trying to
achieve is efficiency maximization (Acton, 1998).
Focusing on the nature of competition in the industry is extremely useful when using
branding to build product awareness as well as during creation of customer loyalty. In both
525 CASE 3 3
instances, health care organizations compete for patients whom they believe will pay for the
services they receive. As Evans, Blitstein, and Nielsen (2015) explain, hospitals that operate in
today’s health care industry use quality services and affordable prices to compete for patients.
All these must be communicated to the customer in the right way. Unless customers possess
adequate knowledge about a particular product or service that is being offered by an
organization, they will not make a decision to purchase those products and services. This
explains why using branding would be appropriate when a health care organization wants to
build awareness of a new product. With a properly organized branding program, health care
organizations will be able to increase knowledge of its new products among customers, and this
will help them to remain competitive in the market (Kaylor, 2016).
Once customers are aware of specific products or services that are being offered by a
health care organization, the company should focus on strategies that will enable it to fulfill its
strategic mission and to increase market share. Branding serves as a very useful tool for health
care organizations that want to fulfill their strategic mission as well as to increase market share.
Fulfillment of strategic mission and expansion of market share are directly related to customer
loyalty. Ideally, a health care organization with an improved customer loyalty will automatically
increase its market share and fulfill its strategic mission. This explains why it would be
appropriate for a health care organization to use branding any time it wants to create customer
loyalty (Snihurowych, Cornelius, and Amelung, 2009).
Branding creates customer loyalty because it makes customers to have a perception of
value toward a particular brand. Branding helps customers to see the worth of products and
services that are being offered by health care organizations (Snihurowych, Cornelius, and
Amelung, 2009). When customers have a perception of value towards a company’s products or
525 CASE 3 4
services, they will always be attracted to purchase those services or products at whatever cost. It
is important for health care organizations to understand that customers have a choice and they
will seek for products or services from other organizations when a perception of value for a
company’s products or services is lacking. As Acton (1998) explains, customer retention is very
important for every organization that wants to fulfill its strategic mission. Therefore, health care
organizations can implement a branding program whenever they want their customers to develop
a perception of value towards their products and services (Kaylor, 2016).
Health care organizations that embrace branding have experienced positive impacts from
the strategy. According to Acton (1998), health care organizations that use branding have an
opportunity to integrate the needs of customers into products and services they offer. In this
manner, they strive to fulfill those needs by developing effective capabilities that will promote a
proper exchange of information with customers. Moreover, health care organizations that use
branding have improved technical and service quality because they always struggle to deliver the
best. Additionally, branding helps to improve financial performance in healthcare organizations
which utilize it as a marketing strategy (Evans, Blitstein and Nielsen, 2015).
The use of branding can, however, have unexpected negative consequences for health
care organizations. While health care organizations may implement a branding program hoping
that it will generate positive outcomes, their expectations may not come right as the unexpected
may occur (Acton, 1998). For instance, an organization may use branding to enhance customer
awareness of its new product with the aim of expanding market share and remaining competitive.
Unfortunately, customer response may still be negative, and the organization may not record any
increase in sales. This may happen due to the wrong choice of a branding approach. Health care
organization should know that branding may not produce the anticipated positive outcomes and
525 CASE 3 5
they must be prepared to face the outcome. Unexpected negative consequences may occur when
using branding due to lack of proper definition of the purpose of branding before its
implementation. To avoid unexpected negative consequences when using branding, health care
organizations should have a clear definition of the purpose of their branding program as this will
act guidance on the specific approach that they should take to achieve the best outcome
(Snihurowych, Cornelius, and Amelung, 2009).
References
Acton, V. (1998). The role of branding in health care. Managing Care Quality, 6(4): 15-19
Evans, D., Blitstein, J. & Nielsen, W. (2015). Systematic review of health care branding: growth
of a promising practice. Translational Behavioral Medicine, 5(1):24-36.
Kaylor, N. (2016). Brand loyalty: Why it matters for your health care practice. Retrieved from
healthcareacces.com
Snihurowych, R., Cornelius, F. & Amelung, V. E. (2009). Can branding by health care provider
organizations drive the delivery of higher technical and service quality. Qualitative
Management of Healthcare, 18(2):126-34