Motivating your patients: marketing dental services.
In most industrialized countries the issues of unemployment or under-employment are becoming more critical for the members of the dental associations. In some countries this is creating greater competition between the private practitioners and public health dentists as well as between private dental practitioners themselves. Modern marketing, especially service marketing theory and models, can provide dentists and dental associations with tools to improve their position in relation to patients, political decision makers and other public agencies. However, marketing has to be understood correctly as a philosophy providing a means of approaching the establishing, maintaining and enhancing patient or customer relationships and not as a narrowly defined set of tools. As long as marketing is considered to be external campaigns, such as advertising and not much else, it is bound to fail. Other dimensions of marketing, such as interactive marketing and internal marketing, are of much greater importance to dental practitioners.
Grönroos
C
C
Department of Marketing, Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, Helsinki, Finland.
Masalin
K
K
D003752:Dental Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration; D003812:Dentist-Patient Relations; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D008389:Marketing of Health Services / Q000379:methods*; D009042:Motivation; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D012953:Societies, Dental