Effects of traditional and digital marketing methods preferences on patients in healthcare institutions management

Businesses have been seeking ways to generate and sustain financial returns, a core objective since the dawn of modern economics. Whether producing goods or services, companies across all sectors must find potential customers who demand their outputs. Customer demands closely align with perceived service quality, pricing policies, and expectations. Enhancing demand is crucial for financial growth and maximizing revenue. After producing products and services tailored to the demographic, social, or economic statuses of customers, it's imperative to integrate these outputs with effective promotion and marketing. Selecting suitable marketing activities for the target audience, establishing a corporate brand image, maintaining high human resource quality, and ensuring customer satisfaction and experience are pivotal in strategic planning. The healthcare sector, like others, is in search of ways to sustain business activities and establish a sustainable model. In both Public and Private sector investments comprising healthcare institutions, while the Private sector forms commercial expectations from its activities, the Public dimension expects efficient service delivery as per the obligations of a social state. The common ground for both structures is the enhancement of perceived service quality, which involves providing services to patients within a sustainable cycle. If businesses can allocate financial resources from their budgets to such marketing activities and apply them with the right marketing methodology, they can generate positive feedback from patients and take steps towards the expected sustainable growth. At this point, the complex structure of the Healthcare Sector, regulations, and policies will lead to certain guidelines in the studies. Significant investments made by healthcare institutions that properly structure all these variables will begin to be commercially recovered. This thesis, approached from the perspective of Private Healthcare Institutions, investigates which marketing strategy and marketing channel are more preferred for patients to access relevant promotion and marketing activities during healthcare service delivery. In the thesis, data were collected from patients receiving services from hospitals belonging to a private healthcare group in Samsun and Kocaeli provinces through online surveys conducted via Microsoft Forms. Participants from Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, and other cities were included to see their preferences. A total of 200 people participated in the study, of which 198 were evaluated. According to the findings obtained from the research; it is understood that patients' use of social media will increase with the impact of digitization and this can enhance the effectiveness of marketing through social media channels. Additionally, it is noted that this effect can influence healthcare institutions' websites and indirectly affect their decisions. Especially, the younger generation allocates more time to the internet and social media compared to other age groups, and gender does not seem to be influential on these variables.