Author: Eric N. Berkowitz
Publisher: Jones and Bartlett Learning – 515 pages
Book Review by: Nano Khilnani
This book has extensive coverage of topics pertaining to marketing as it applies to health care. With a length of more than 500 pages it has 14 chapters within three parts entitled: The Marketing Process, Understanding the Consumer, and The Marketing Mix.
We would say that this book pretty much covers anything and everything that relates to marketing in the field of health care, from the very meaning of marketing, its prerequisites and its elements for success, all the way to controlling and monitoring the end result of your quest for more revenue – the performance of your marketing plan as it is being (or after) it is implemented.
A sample business planning manual is also provided to you at the end of the book to help you get started in drafting your business plan, which includes marketing your product or service. A glossary is also provided to help you learn terms unfamiliar to you.
The author of this very useful book – Eric N Berkowitz – is professor of marketing at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He obtained his bachelor’s and MBA degrees from that university and his PhD from Ohio State University.
Berkowitz has an impressive educational and professional record. He has authored four other books on various areas of health care, including finance, management, marketing and strategic planning. He has been editor of two periodicals – Trend Watch and the Journal of Health Care Marketing and has written numerous articles pertaining to health care in various journals.
He has won several awards including the Outstanding College Teacher Award in 1998 from the University of Massachusetts and the Frank J. Weaver Leadership Award from the Alliance for Healthcare Strategy for his contributions to the advancement of health care marketing.
The Contents page in this book not only lists its three parts and the titles of its chapters, but also the headings and sub-headings of the topics covered in each chapter. This enables the student and the health care practitioner to get immediately to the topic he or she is looking for. Numerous helpful charts, diagrams and tables throughout the book enhance the learning process.
This book is extremely well organized for ease of use and more effective learning. At the end of each of its 14 chapters, there are six sections that help the user review and retain the material: learning objectives, conclusions, key terms, a summary of the chapter, chapter problems, and notes.
This reminds me of the SQ4R study method I learned in high school. I used it for learning material in books, and especially when preparing for quizzes, tests and exams at the end of each study term. The study method consists of survey, question, read, recite, review and write. It made my studies and homework productive.
In Part I of this book, you learn how the marketing process works in health care. In the first chapter, among other topics, it discusses “the dilemma of needs and wants” and the “non-marketing-driven planning process” in health care, both of which seem unique to this industry, and are rare in others.
In the light of this and other unique characteristics of the health care business, the second chapter instructs you on how to develop a marketing strategy which includes developing a marketing plan after analyzing and understand competitive advantages and disadvantages, and taking stock of assets and liabilities.
In Part II of this book, you learn to understand the consumer, with its initial chapter looking at buyer behavior in health care and how he or she arrives at buying decisions. It discusses the psychological influences that influence the decision-making process.
Research is important for formulating an effective marketing plan, so an entire chapter is devoted to it, including data collection on your target customers. You look at the different segments of your market you, so one of the chapters in Part II deals with it. Developing customer loyalty is also important in the increasingly competitive health care market, so a chapter is devoted to it.
Part III, on the marketing mix, dwells on such important issues to success as the product and service line, pricing, promotion, advertising, sales and sales management, and distribution.
The last chapter of the book shows you how to control and monitor the performance of the marketing initiatives you have undertaken. In other words, how much bang are you getting for buck you spent. Among other expected results, this chapter looks at your share of the market garnered, revenues received, profits realized and profitability or margins on the different products or services sold.
Berkowitz points out that with health care in the United States now having become a major portion of the gross domestic product (some estimate it to be as much as an eighth of GDP) “ever greater demands are placed on the value of what is provided for the dollars that are spent to deliver care to patients.”
He writes that with detailed information now available (unlike in the past) on the Internet, shoppers for health care services are more empowered than ever before, in fostering competition among health service providers for consumers’ dollars.
A third factor Berkowitz mentions is the dramatic change in recent years in the competitive landscape for health care. Hospitals, doctors and other care providers now know that there is increasing requirement in the marketplace for transparency of information about the quality of care, service delivery, timing, and pricing of the services they offer.
Finally, a global health care marketplace is now emerging for the benefit of consumers, the author states, as a fourth factor in the changing marketplace. As a result, the global competition for consumers’ health care dollars is putting increasing pressure on the pricing and quality of services providers by United States-based hospitals and other health care entities.
For example, Indian physicians, including some trained in North American and European schools and hospitals, now provide quality medical care in modern, well-equipped world-class facilities in India. Thousands of American consumers now go to India to get surgeries done in Indian hospitals, and receive other types of treatment.
These four major factors of change in health care marketing – value, consumer shopping, transparency and global competition – make it imperative for all types of health care providers to learn the essentials of marketing and equip themselves with the necessary tools for success. Berkowitz helps fill that need very well with this well thought-out, well-organized and well-written book.
