Marketing and strategic management: integrating skills for a better hospital

Participants in a 1985 one-day seminar sponsored by the American Hospital Association's Society for Hospital Planning and Marketing were asked two questions: How many of the hospitals represented here have conducted marketing surveys in the recent past? How many of you were satisfied with the results of the survey or could integrate it into the strategic management of your institution? While all but two of the 125 participants answered yes to the first question, only two responded affirmatively to the second. A gap between having a survey done and implementing the results had been identified. The administrators had probably rushed into "marketing" with little forethought and even less effort to comprehend how this management skill fits into existing institutional skills, capabilities, roles, and goals. To close the gap between marketing theory and practice an institution must adopt a more far-reaching, proactive stance toward integrating marketing into the management routine at an early stage. This article presents a case study that may help health care administrators rethink the role of marketing in management and its place in the sequence of strategic decision making for their institution.