Attributes used in hospital services’ advertisements in a metropolitan newspaper’s Sunday health section

Abstract

Although newspaper print advertising has waned given the general decline in newspaper readership, hospitals are steady advertisers in metropolitan daily newspapers. Using a content analysis, this study identified, categorized, and accounted for frequencies of the attributes hospital marketers used in print advertisements promoting their services over a three-year period. We identified a typology of six attributes. Findings indicated that the most frequently used attribute in hospitals’ print advertisements was patients, next health professionals; whereas technology and procedure were the least frequently used attributes. Branding was the most frequently used attribute when looking at the secondary impressions in the advertisements.