View article

Health care has been dramatically disrupted on both the demand and supply sides over the last decade. These changes are impacting the creation, provision, and consumption of health care in fundamental ways. Despite these cataclysmic shifts, the role of marketing remains only partially understood and frozen in a very conventional set of business-to-business (eg, detailing or advertising to doctors) and business-to-consumer (eg, direct-to-consumer [DTC] advertising) strategies. While important, this view ignores the new actors, roles, and exchanges1 that characterize our disrupted health care markets. We argue that this limited view means the field is not acting on the full range of opportunities associated with these changes, including understanding their effects on consumer welfare. With this special issue on “Marketing in the Health Care Sector,” we highlight more opportunities for marketing to contribute.

At the …