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Jon M. Thompson, PhD, Department of Health Sciences, James Madison University, MSC 4301, 3134 HHS Building, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, 540/568-3472, thompsjm@jmu.edu and James Eric Hays, BS, Department of Health Administration, Virginia Commonwealth University, P.O. Box 980203, Richmond, VA 23298-0203.
Marketing actions of community hospitals and hospitals systems have increased in recent years in an effort to boost consumer preference and utilization in an increasingly competitive environment (Kotler and Clarke, 1994). Within the past decade, the Internet has been recognized by health care organizations as a key means to reach consumers and generate increased consumer preference (Thompson and Howard, 2000). Despite the widespread availability of hospital web sites, little is known about their content, which reflects the underlying strategies of hospitals in communicating with the public and generating consumer preference. This paper reports the results of an exploratory study undertaken to identify the content of web sites of community hospitals located in three major urban areas of a large Mid-Atlantic state. Using an analytic framework based on the literature, the research involved a structured content analysis that identified web site features in terms of a hierarchy: basic features, interactive features, and augmented features that exceed consumer expectations. Results are presented that indicate significant variation among hospital web sites as well as variation in underlying differentiation strategies among web sites in local hospital markets. Implications for web site consumer marketing by hospitals are identified as well as implications for consumer information derived from hospital web sites.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.