Is It Important for Healthcare Services to Place the Onus on Patient Satisfaction in Their Brand?

Abstract

Due to the advent of computers, internet, and social media communication, the marketing of services has changed, and consequently, organizations of any kind need to specify a brand image strategy and position it successfully in customer minds without cultural limitations. A semiotic approach for examining the branding strategy was applied on the websites of some healthcare services organizations which were taken as representative case studies. This research study seeks to point out the significance of the signs, either in the linguistic level or the iconic level of analysis, in order to make easily understandable the main issues of a branding strategy. The quality of services, the high standard of scientific expertise, and the availability of clinical equipment are the dominant issues of the examining branding strategies, whereas patient satisfaction and their further quality of life are completely ignored. A suggested innovative branding approach is shown to help entrepreneurs, branding designers, and marketers of healthcare services recognize the value of patient satisfaction.