W 6 Marketing A&S answers - Essay Example

W 6 MARKETING A AND S ANSWERS Lecturer: W 6 MARKETING A&S ANSWERS Advertisements are used as forms of communication and promotion. As a form of communication, advertisements are used to inform and alert customers to an existing service and what is entailed in the service to offer (Sprigings and Allen, 2012). As a form of promotion, advertisement is used to draw attention of customers to why an existing service or product should be selected over the other (Raco, 2013). In the healthcare setting, both concepts of advertisement as communication tool and promotional tool are used.

Between the two concepts however, an argument can be made for the use of advertisement, particularly billboard advertisement as forms of promotion rather than communication as the most effective way to approach advertisement in the healthcare sector. This stand is taken with the position that Berkowitz (2010) takes on the public perception and expectation from advertisement. In their opinion, the growing concern of the public on quality and cost as the two most critical variables for consideration when deciding on health service gives service providers a major responsibility to ensuring that they are able to meet the consumer at the point of this perception.

Meanwhile, using advertisement for the form of communication only emphasizes on issues of advocacy without giving prior concern to competitive arguments such as differences in quality and cost. Based on this reasoning, it would generally be accepted that the best way to portray healthcare advertisement is to use it as a form of promotion where the advertiser persuades the recipient on key aspects of quality and cost that the company in charge has to offer. In a related study by Sprigings and Allen (2012), it was confirmed that affordability and quality are the most important factors the customers look out for in advertisement.

In billboard advertisement also, there is often not sufficient space to say more. The space that is secured would therefore be best used to promote than communicate as communicating advertisements require more space and messages (Berkowitz, 2010). ReferencesBerkowitz J. (2010). Essentials of Health Care Marketing. New York: Bartlett Learning.Raco, M. (2013). Community Participation and Urban Policy in the UK. Session 5. UCL. Unpublished.Sprigings N. and Allen C. (2007). “The communities we are regaining but need to lose”, Community, Work and Family Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 322-332