The state of advertising practices by private hospitals in Nairobi

Abstract

This study sought to establish several facts relating to the state of advertising by private hospitals in Nairobi. The first objective was to determine what are the most dominant advertising practices by private hospitals. Secondly, what are the main advertising objectives for the hospitals. The other objective was to establish what are the common types of advertising hospitals use and lastly which advertising media are they using. The research data was gathered from the 51 private hospitals in the Nairobi region. The hospitals that qualified for the research have both inpatient and outpatient services. Data was collected primarily using a questionnaire and was analysed by way of tabulation and cross tabulation. In order to determine whether certain hospital characteristics did affect the advertising trends in hospitals, four main ones were identified and analysed. These characteristics were; Age, Size, Financial goals and Ownership of the hospital. The research study showed that the most dominant advertising practice was below the line advertising with 84.6% of the hospitals interviewed had printed their names on most of the stationery that were being used by their patients/clients. e.g. Prescription pads. Laboratory request forms, X-ray forms e.t.c. The main value of advertising as indicated by the research was informing customers of the service they offer with 77% rating it as very high. Word OT mouth was found to be the most relied upon media by managers to attract new customers and retain the existing ones. All the hospitals interviewed were found to rely on it as the most effective media tool. Reminder/Competitive advertising came out as the most popular type of advertising used by 64.1% of the entire hospitals. Lastly the most constraining factor facing hospitals when it comes to advertising was found to be the ethical guidelines with 65.7% rating it as above high. There was one major limitation which must be taken into account while reading this report. There searcher was unable to find some respondents in eleven hospitals out of the target population of 51.