A Study of the Relationships between Hospital Advertising Practices and Hospital Characteristics

Abstract

Health care costs are expected to account for 13 percent of the Gross National Product in 1996, an increase from 11.1 percent in 1988. Currently, advertising expenditures constitute nearly $1 billion in outlays for the hospital industry and account for almost half of the marketing budgets of U.S. hospitals (Johnsson 1990). The size of these expenditures make advertising a very important consideration of hospital administrators. In 1989 and 1990, hospital advertising budgets rebounded from a spending slump which began in late 1987, and appear not to have been adversely affected by the current advertising recession.