Understanding the Challenges of the Healthcare System in Promoting Best Use of Digital Marketing Tools for a Purposeful Living

Abstract

The pace of the evolution of digital marketing is faster than ever and the concept of marketing and marketing models have been redefined to respond to this challenge. As a result, consumers have been empowered thank to the accessibility to this ecosystem and consumers’ behaviour is affected by this disruptive evolution on the era of instant access, multiple opportunities and availability of information. The concept of health and health care system approaches have been also redefined. Instead of focusing on cure a disease the focus is now put on the holistic concept of prevention from the starting point, the promotion of healthier lifestyles or purposeful living. Thus, one of this approaches states that the term of value needs to be questioned and offers a value-based approach where the central focus is put on health outcomes. From this perspective, increasing value seems to be crucial for a better interaction with one of the main healthcare system customers, the patients. Despite these challenges, the healthcare system seems to remain the same and digital marketing tools have not been properly implemented. Instead, it seems to be an increase of misuse of drugs, counterfeit drugs and the empowered and more informed consumer feels misguided. A review of literature is conducted to generate a picture of how consumers are making use of the digital marketing tools to promote their health from a “purposeful living” perspective. In order to shed some light, recommendations are suggested to those institutions in charge of educating consumers on their best use of internet for this purpose.