Marketing Activities and Financial Performance of Korean Hospitals

우리나라 병원의 마케팅 활동수준과 재무성과

The main objective of this paper is to perform an empirical analysis on the relationship between various marketing activities and financial performance of Korean hospitals. A survey was conducted through structured questionnaire for 495 hospitals, and data from 218 hospitals were utilized in the final anaylsis.(response rate: 44%) Survey items include general characteristics of the hospitals(size, type, location), degree of competition, financial performance. marketing organization! budget, and level of various marketing activities in service development, access improvement, promotion, and pricing. We examine descriptive statistics of the response scores on marketing activities to evaluate the current status of marketing management of Korean hospitals, compare the results across hospital size, type and location, and perform regression analysis to investigate the relaionship between marketing and financial performance. Major findings are as follows: 1) About 46% of the responding hospitals have marketing departments although they are named as 'planning' or 'PR' departments, and the marketing budget on average represents 1.74% of the total expenditures. 2) Average level of marketing activities is calculated to be about 3.32 on 5-point scale, meaning that Korean hospitals implement their marketing programs 'somewhat actively'; however, the scores on the areas of marketing plannning and strategy are relatively low. 3) Large hospitals tend to be more active in marketing than small hospitals, and public hospitals' activities in marketing are not lower compared to private hospitals. 4) Level of overall marketing activities is positively related with financial performance measured by various finacial indicators except for profitability, implying that marketing is successful in revenue generation but needs to be more cost-effective. Also, when the marketing variables are separately included in the regression, no significant relationship is found, which means that various marketing activities are more effective when they are collectively implemented.