HOSPITAL BRANDING

Purpose Hospital branding strategies are used for developing services magnitude
and improving quality and using innovation. following correct branding
strategies, leads to organization positioning in the market38. Thus,
subject hospitals tried to improve their brand using branding strategies
(Afzal et al., 2016).

Desired relationship of the organization with customer is a solution for

long term customer satisfaction it even starts before direct contact with
the customer and continues after the contact35. In subject hospitals the
relationship of the brand with customers is made with electronic media
networks and advertisement also having effective behavioral relationship
and customer desired services (Afzal et al., 2016)

Production of a hybrid hotelhospital space attempts to create an

‘international’ therapeutic space, in which the familiar routines, divisions
of labour and spaces of biomedicine create a comfort zone for disoriented
and vulnerable traveler/patients. The experience of it as an ‘international’
space draws upon symbols and the physical structures and organization
of space and privacy, as well as the lived experience of language, visible
diversity, sounds, food, smell and division of time. It is also produced
through the interactions with staff members and other patients and visitors
(Whittaker and Chee, 2015)
What is? Hospitals are institutions that have the commitment to give patients The
best care possible. It is important make every effort to communicate to
citizens what a hospital has invested in with regard to professionalism and
technology (Esposito, 2017)

External branding adopts all the available tools in a synergic way: classic
media—for example, TV, radio, and print press—are useful as brand
reinforcement; web communication, storytelling, and social media (e.g.,
Facebook) are useful to point to different targets in terms of service or
care Pathway (Esposito, 2017)
 Internal branding is important for staff engagement. Many tools are
dedicated to this activity—for example, the house organ for the employees
of the hospital, intranet, climate analysis, and social events for employees’
children (Esposito, 2017)

In-hospital branding is the way patients, staff, visitors, and other

stakeholders experience the brand in the hospital environment. The
corporate brand lives clear and clean inside the hospital: “You can see it
on the walls, in the window stickers. Aesthetics is part of the Humanitas
culture, a value that people recognize in us (Esposito, 2017)
History Corporate branding has become crucial in recent years because brands
are a means to differentiate from current And future competitors. The
corporate brand focuses on the whole organization: it is about people,
values, practices and processes, and Corporate communication, It
conveys expectations of what the company will deliver in terms of
products, services, and customer experience (Esposito, 2017)

Corporate brand is a multi-dimensional concept because its essence is

defined by the corporate communication: the system of visual and verbal
signs conveyed by the company; the set of its behavior; the performance
of its supply system. It considers multiple stakeholders as a strategic
factor in the organization (Esposito, 2014)

In the health care context, hospitals use corporate branding by promoting

specific issues and drawing the audience’s attention to their name,
identity, and values From an organizational point of view, hospitals are
complex institutions. In many cases, they depend on other organizations,
such as universities or foundations. They are hierarchical, structured by
different departments, which in some cases are independently and
branded. All these features should be considered in order to manage and
communicate the corporate brand correctly (Esposito, 2017)
Bussines
vs
Hospital
Brand

(Esposito, 2017)
Medical Every year, on an average, 0.15 million patients travel from Europe and
Tourism USA to India mostly for surgeries and therapies in the hope of low priced
yet high-skilled treatment (Das and Mukherjee, 2016)

The key factors that led to an increasing popularity of medical tourism

include (Das and Mukherjee, 2016)
 new technology and skills available in the destination countries
 reduced transportation costs
 long waiting times
 significantly higher costs in a patient’s home country
 Internet marketing

A set of marketing activities that measure the brand equity of any

destination are as follows (Das and Mukherjee, 2016)
 name, term, symbol, logo or other graphics that differentiates a
destination;
 the unique memories of travel experience; and
 emotional connect with the customer and destination.
Factor

(Esposito, 2017)
 hospitals require systematic organisational support to fulfil their roles in
health promotion, including transformational and transactional factors in
organisations
transformational factors include
 a supportive policy context
 external operational support
 supportive leadership
 established Hospital structure

transactional factors include

 available resources
 healthy policies
 integration into subsystems
 effective project management
 recognized efforts of staff members on health promotion
(Lee et al., 2013)
Patients’ Ideal’ types of patient positions in healthcare delivery and
roles in improvement (McDermott and Pedersen, 2016)
healthcar
e

five ‘ideal types’ of patient positions within organizations are identified.

1. First we note those theoretically celebrated as ‘Involved’
individuals (Q1, high opportunity, high openness), who are
personally open to engaging, and afforded opportunities to do so
by organisations.
 2. Second, we also note potential for individuals to be ‘Invited’ to
participate (Q2, high opportunity, low openness), by being afforded
opportunities to engage with servicedelivery and/or improvement
that they may neither wish to, nor be in a position to avail of.
3. Third, we note that the potential contributions of patients may be
‘Invisible’ (Q3, low opportunity, low openness), with neither
individuals nor organizations promoting patients as active agents
in healthcare delivery and/or improvement.
4. Fourth, we note potential for patients to be made ‘Inarticulate’ (Q4,
low opportunity, high openness), with openness to engaging - and
potentially significant contributions - but no opportunities afforded
by the organization to make them.
5. Last we note a category of patients who may need to be ‘Induced’
to be involved – holding a middle ground, with a degree of
openness that may require persuasion to become explicitly
enacted, combined with an organizational context providing some
opportunities for engagement

Patient involvement in decision making and service improvement

This typology draws attention to the potential for patients to be informed

about the decisions made for and about their care or service; to be
consulted and have input prior to decisionmaking; to jointly codetermine
the outcome, or to take control (McDermott and Pedersen, 2016)
How to Promotion activities of a hospital helps in communicating the existence of
Increase services offered to present, past & future customers. Generally promotion
Hospital includes advertising, sales promotion, personal selling & publicity, but
Branding instead of undertaking aggressive promotion. hospital advertisements
should contain a relatively high level of information and should be
advertised as comfort zones
for human ailments (Motwani et al., 2014)

Hospitals’ Brand Architecture

consists of five elements:
1. Identity
Corporate identity refers to the personality of the organization, i.e.,
its history, ethics, philosophy, behavior, and standards. This
identity is a source of competitive advantage that also influences
the organization’s reputation. The identity is related to the image
and vision of the company and its strategy.
2. Values
values guide the organization in its policies, planning, and
communications and help it build community among employees.
Values are reflected in worker behavior. To help create brand
equity, corporate values should add unique value to an
organization’s brand that no competitor can imitate.
3. Mission
“Mission” refers to the organization’s economic, social, or
community objectives. Mission guides the organization’s
employees toward a common goal and defines their work practices
and work quality.
4. Vision
Vision consists of a compelling statement of the goal that the
organization intends to achieve in the long-term. vision should be
concise, clear and capable of inspiring employees
5. culture.
The corporate culture embodies an organization’s identity. It is a
source of behavioral inspiration for employees. It helps the
 organization implement a unique way of working that contributes
to its brand personality.
These architecture are part of the foundation for the strategic formation of
corporate identity (Medina et al., 2016)

Appointment Registration Systems

For patients facing such systems, personal knowledge and capability are
important factors that influence patients’ appointment system choices. To
increase the use of such systems, hospitals must strengthen the
promotion of innovative appointment registration systems. Moreover,
hospitals should improve the design of such systems to make them more
convenient for patients to understand and use, such as using a citizen ID
card rather than the hospital’s own health card. More personalized design
and promotion might increase the use of appointment registration
systems, benefit patients, and improve hospital efficiency (Yu et al., 2013)

Patients alto preferred to be reminded a day before appointment and they

perceive that the use of short message services is very beneficial
(Bangure et al., 2015)

Post-Discharged calling programs

establishing proactive post-discharge calling programs, staffed by trained
healthcare professionals focus on surgical, cardiac, and ED patients, the
patients most at risk for post-discharge complications. Research shows
that patients who receive detailed after-hospital care instructions are 30%
less likely to be readmitted to the hospital or to visit the emergency
department than uninformed patients who’ve recently been discharged
(“Post-Discharge Call Programs - Improving Satisfaction and Safety,”
n.d.)

Employer Attractiveness
The top factors of employer attractiveness relate to the direct work
situation and, therefore, factors that can be influenced by human
resources. In contrast, product- and enterprise-specific factors, like
product or service quality or the size of a company, don’t seem to be of
prime importance
The following factors can be identified as the most important for employer
attractiveness
 career and promotion opportunities.
 training and development opportunities.
 work environment.
 work task (interesting, challenging, enjoyable etc.).
 compensation (appropriate, performance-oriented etc.).
(Merk and Rahmel, 2016)

Untuk merekrut pekerja baru, dapat digunakan instrumen seperti dibawah

ini (Merk and Rahmel, 2016)

Social Media
As a result of their participatory nature and the user’s prominent role in
the communication process social media have become fundamental to
generating brand value and corporate recognition. Thus, hospitals are
increasingly turning to social media not only because they help patients
better understand diseases and treatments but also because they enable
hospitals to improve the services offered and to establish a more fluid
communicative relationship between the health professional and the
patient (Medina et al., 2016)
Social media, including social networking sites (Facebook.com, Googleþ),
microblogs(Twitter.com),Ana photograph Ana video sharing
(Pinterest.com,YouTube.com),ari changing The Seed and depth
ofinteractionbetweenhealthcareorganizationsandthepublic.
Earlyhospitaladoptionofsocialmediahasfocusedcon-
siderablyonmarketing.1,2 In additiontosupportingahospital's marketing
goals,social mediacanbeusedforhealtheducation,a cornerstone
ofpediatricprimarycare,andtopromotethepopu- lation
healthofcommunities(Wong et al., 2016)

hospital’s social media page may be a useful recruitment tool because it

can have a positive effect on nurses’ perceptions of the employer brand
and organizational attractiveness. This is good news for organizations
trying to attract potential applicants. a social media profile can change
perceptions of the organization as an employer as well (Carpentier et al.,
2017)

Facebook
Facebook is a means to implement institutional communication strategies
because of the several advantages that the social media provides
1. it promotes corporate identik through the diffusion of elements such
as mission and vision
2. It helps generate brand recognition.
3. It creates a sense of community between the user and the brand
4. It positively affects the organization’s brand image
5. It has become well established in users communication protocols.
Consumers tend to spend more time on Facebook pages than
corporate business pages

In fact, 80% of users or social media prefer Facebook as the means

through which branded entities contact them (Medina et al., 2016)
Youtube
YouTube is a website that was established in 2005. It has grown in size,
to become one of the most popular websites in the world. there are many
YouTube videos demonstrating Medical contents with a wide range of
video quality. Videos uploaded by tertiary centers showed the highest
educational value. The discrepancy in video quality was not recognized
by the video viewers. More videos with higher quality need to be
uploaded, and an active filtering process should be implemented on the
YouTube website (Lee et al., 2015)

Packaging
Packaging (and wrappings) are key to attracting consumer attention and
influencing sensory expectations. For example Food Packaging.
children preferred the taste of carrots if they thought they were from
McDonald’s. Yet when children were given the option of carrots in
McDonald’s wrapping or carrots in colourful wrapping, children liked the
“colourful” carrots more. Appearance, rather than branding, appears to
influence children’s taste preferences (Elliott et al., 2013)

Foodmenu
Menus are the fundamental connection between the patient and the
kitchen and largely dictate which foods are delivered to patients. the
spoken menu system was associated with improvements in some aspects
of patient satisfaction with foodservice, without upsurges in food or labour
costs, compared to the printed menu. The computerised interactive menu
selector system is another ordering system that may be considered to
improve aspects of patient satisfaction with foodservice and to generate
cost savings for hospitals currently using the printed menu (Ottrey and
Porter, 2016).
Descriptive menus were associated with increased consumption of
selected food items. This is of particular relevance to patients and
healthcare organisations where adequate nutrition promotes healing and
 recovery, and decreased food waste represents cost benefits to the
organization (Ottrey and Porter, 2016)

Using Term
In Taiwan, the terms “palliative” and “hospice” tend to be avoided in
naming palliative care units. Instead, words reflecting the themes of
“kindness and love,” “peace,” and “religion” were frequently used. This
finding suggests the hypothesis that less stigmatizing names were used
to generate more positive impressions, higher perceived need, and more
referrals (Dai et al., 2017)

Chalenge The changes in the hospital sector: increased competition, growing cost
pressure, the need for rationalization and restructuring, changing patient
landscape and needs generate the necessity of considering the hospital
sector as any other industry with regard to utilization and implementation
of continuous, consequent and highly professional management
activities. Although hospital branding has been barely implemented by the
German hospitals, examples from other countries have shown that an
active brand management can be successful. Brand management also
means service and patient orientation and process optimization in the
hospitals (LEUCA and FASTENMEIER, n.d.)

The development of a motivating, brand enhancing corporate culture

seems to be more than necessary related to hospital branding: the human
factor plays a decisive role in the brand image building. Is it worth
establishing hospital brands? Examples from other industries show that
strong brands need time, resources and active maintenance in order to
achieve leading market positions. Brand management implies both risks
and opportunities. The hospitals that are going to dominate the market in
the future will be able to think and act in terms of profitability and market
orientation in order to fulfil their social commitment and to ensure its own
 ‘healthy’ economic development and growth (LEUCA and
FASTENMEIER, n.d.).

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