Under what circumstances do you feel that it is beneficial for health care organizations to use branding?
Branding is described as process in which the service or a product is differentiated from that of the competitors by the use of a symbol before the consumers. However, branding in health care is different from the other industries because it involves the provision of high quality products and services in order to ensure that the needs of the consumers are fulfilled while observing the ethical, legal and economic responsibilities of the organization (Chinomana, 2013). This shows that health care organization has the responsibility of ensuring that the interest of the stakeholders such as consumers, workforce and investors are preserved.
According to Smith (2010), the health care providers owes the investors the economic responsibility of ensuring that earnings are maximized. In addition, health care providers has the prerogative of ensuring that its operations complies with the requirements as established in the law (Fellows, 2013). This include the ethical responsibility of making sure that its operations abides to the ethical and social norms as established in the society. All these aspects may present challenges when a health care provider wants to promote or establish a brand. This paper discussed the circumstance in which branding is beneficial to health care organizations and how it can lead to unexpected negative consequences.
Health care providers play crucial role in the society since it serve as the platform for patients to access wellness and health. Recent studies have shown that consumers tend to be loyal and purchase a specific brand after associating it with the product or service. Therefore, in order for a brand to be successful, the designers must aligned to convey a message that concur with mission and the principles of the organization. This means all the stakeholder in health care organization must be engaged in the development and execution of a brand for the purposes of producing a unique products that enhances patients’ experience (Ergin, et al., 2014). For example, in 2000 artist Heidi Cody conducted a series of performance with the objectives of making her audience to be consciously acknowledge how branded or indoctrinated they are just by being the average consumer. This is a clear indication that for a health care provider to build a trusted and reputable brand, they should facilitate its recognition and build a positive correlation that relates to market share.
Similarly, health care providers may benefit from branding in the same version. Jacqueline Fellows (2013) illustrated how the health care organizations can rebrand themselves for the improvement of the organizations’ operations. The health care providers can benefit from rebranding by creating a single logo that is affixed or attached to all products and services they offer (Fellows, 2013). The objectives of consolidating many images and creating a single ideal image by the marketing team allows the organization to build a clearer brand identity which become more recognizable in their communities with a positive impact on market share.
It is important to understand that circumstance under which branding becomes beneficial to health care organizations are not limited to market presence and spending habits which is commonly determined by consumer recognition thus making a tangible impact. There are other trends in the market that demonstrate the circumstance that branding become beneficial to the health care organization. For instance, Richard Chinomona (2013) conducted the study to determine whether compulsive buying correlates with branding. The findings indicated that out of four hypothesis tested, three showed the correlation between compulsive buying and specific branding (Chinomana, 2013). This is a clear indication that patients’ loyalty to a specific health care organizations’ brand correlate directly with their trust, satisfaction and experience with the brand. Bearing this mind, branding can be beneficial to a healthcare organization since it leads to loyalty and make the patients to seek a repeat care in the organization. From this perspective, branding is beneficial to the health care organization by word of mouth marketing that the organization can easily referenced with an identifiable logo and in turn easily identifiable by other.
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Can the use of branding have unexpected negative consequences? Explain in detail.
In other industries, studies have shown that building brand awareness helps the company to improve its business operations. Similarly, health care organizations can use branding to improve their operations. However, the use of branding can have unexpected negative disadvantages and subsequently lead to undesirable consequences (Romaniuk, & Nenyez-Thiel, 2013). Analysis have shown that branding leads to increased consumerism and at the same, this process tend to influence large portion of the population to rebel against other brands. In the extreme, push branding can lead to anti-branding to certain products.
Although the key objective of the branding is to increase market share and consumer loyalty, the secondary impact is anti-branding. The increased anti-branding which is currently experienced in the world is attributed to advancement in technology (Fellows, 2013). For example, turkey residence initiated anti-Starbuck campaign online for pillaging their resources and the move became successful due to improved technology and networking globally. Similarly, anti-branding in health care organizations can occur when a segment of the patients perceives that specific health care provider is imposing a consumer culture on its audiences.
According to Ergin et al. (2014), health care organization when their marketing strategy gives an impression that seems to impose a consumer culture so that an individual feeling is influenced as though selecting the product of the organization mirrors the status of many people purchasing the brands. Analysis indicated that most people select brand name based on the perceived decrease level of risks which is a contrast to an organization that do not have branding name product (Kozinets, et al., 2010). Therefore, health care organization should ensure that branding do not reflect consumerism that make the audience to interpret that the organization main focus is to make profit like any other business. For profit businesses, the public sees it as an entity that creates profits for shareholders. This is the legal responsibility and top priority for profit business. This means that when the public have this perception about health care organization, it will be seen as to prioritize profit instead of actual wellness and health of its patients. The other aspect that make branding to result to a negative impact is unfulfilled promises as stated in branding. Many brand are marketed with the message that it will fulfill certain promises (Kaynak, & Eksi, 2013). However, during branding process, there is likelihood that the branding image confuses the audience. This confusion is likely to lead to anti-branding and public tend to shy away from purchasing products of that company.
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