Assessing the viability of situationally driven segmentation opportunities in the health care market.
The impact of situational factors has typically been investigated in the context of goods marketing. Very few studies have investigated the influence of situational factors on services marketing. This study demonstrates the importance of situational influence on services marketing by delineating a consumer-based, situationally characterized competitive market structure for health care services. The competitive structure of the health care market is delineated in terms of the similarity/substitutability of the three-factor, situational characterizations of ten health care alternatives. The general marketing implications of the market-structure delineation procedure and the health care-specific implications of the findings are discussed.
Gehrt
K C
KC
College of Business Administration, University of Maine, Orono 04469.
Pinto
M B
MB
D000465:Algorithms; D002755:Choice Behavior; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D003256:Community Participation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004465:Economic Competition; D005260:Female; D006296:Health Services / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006302:Health Services Research / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D008389:Marketing of Health Services / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015146:Midwestern United States; D017059:Models, Econometric; D012044:Regression Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires