The marketing approach of bringing gifts to potential clients can be roughly classified as “gift marketing.” Such a strategy has been created based on the concept that the process of gift giving brings people closer to each other. Businesses often send potential customers gifts to capture their attention as well as remind customers about products and services a company offers. Therefore, by bringing expensive gifts to the medical staff, a marketer can remind about the physical therapy services his facility provides. On the other hand, the fact that the medical staff always refuses the gestures of kindness suggests that such a marketing approach is not functioning the way it should.
According to the article by Jim Taschetta (2012), businesses spend approximately three hundred billion dollars on promotional gifts (para. 12). However, the more promotional material potential clients get, the less interested they are in the offered products and services. In such cases, some marketers choose to switch to more expensive gift options so that clients receive greater value. By giving gifts, companies hope to cause a change in consumer behavior and contribute to the flow of new clients.
When it comes to the sphere of healthcare, drug companies are known for influencing doctors’ prescribing habits by giving them gifts (Seaman, 2016, para. 2), an example that can be seen even in popular culture (movie Love & Other Drugs). Such a marketing approach may be useful in the sphere of drug prescription; however, the marketer trying to get more referrals to his physical therapy practice should employ other strategies if the “gift marketing” offers little results.
Over the years, ethical standards of healthcare marketing have changed dramatically and nowadays are applicable to social media advertising. However, there are other aspects of healthcare marketing ethics that have undergone some drastic changes. For example, some major ethical issues arise when marketers use pseudo-testimonials by employed actors to make doctors prescribe new medication to patients. When it comes to the stories of miraculous treatment, marketers should mention that actors are being used so that doctors don’t mistake them for real patients (Margolis, 2014, para. 2).
A real-life example of unethical advertising is the ad issued by the University of Mississippi Health Care Children’s Cancer Center. The advertisement showed two photos of a boy, one taken at four years old, when he was struggling with leukemia, and another at seven years old, when he was leukemia-free. In reality, both photos were taken of a healthy boy at seven years old. His appearance in the first photo was retouched to make him look sick (Margolis, 2014, para. 4).
Therefore, over the years, ethical standards of healthcare marketing changed for worse because of the increased demand for healthcare services as well as companies’ goal to earn more. Ethical standards violated by some healthcare organizations should be controlled by agencies such as the Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development that composes and updates the healthcare marketing guidelines. Some methods of healthcare marketing cannot be strictly monitored since healthcare ads often appear on the Internet; however, there should be a common ethical framework for any form of healthcare marketing. Whether it is gift marketing or actor marketing, deceit should not be a way to capture the attention of potential visitors or buyers.
References
Margolis, L. (2014). Ethical guidelines for healthcare marketing. Web.
Seaman, A. (2016). Drug company gifts linked to doctors’ prescribing habits. Web.
Taschetta, J. (2012). Why gift marketing is the next big thing. Web.