Health Care for Elderly People

The increasing size and life expectancy of the elderly population have significant implications for health care. Indeed, the medical care expenditures are increasing constantly. Moreover, Sirgy M. J. et al. (1991) showed in their article that health care service satisfaction / dissatisfaction is related to life satisfaction / dissatisfaction for elderly people. In this part we are going to analyze how marketing in this field is done, or more precisely, we will analyze the article of Suzeanne Benet, Robert E. Pitts, and Michael LaTour, where it is discussed if it is appropriate to fear old people in order to do health care marketing.

It is common in health care publicity to show a situation where an old person loses all his money, or even cannot afford an important operation. The promise given by the marketers is that with their insurance these situations will not happen. We are going to analyze here how much such publicities can affect elderly people.

First, the vulnerability of older people is analyzed in this article. The authors concluded here that elderly people are more vulnerable, and therefore they should be protected from inappropriate marketing schemes.

Second, talking about the information process of elderly people, the authors don't see a significant impact on learning caused by the aging process. However the older people should be given more time to process new information.

Moreover, the information acquisition is strongly affected by sensory ability problems of old people. Such problems could be responsible for the perceived vulnerability of this group.

Concerning the access to information, there is no evidence that elderly people are less informed than young people. Indeed, we can assume that old people are better informed, as they spend more time on mass medias.

Finally, the authors analyzed the fear appeal theory, and concluded that the psychological responses of elderly people to fear-based appeals don't differ significantly from those of younger consumers.

In conclusion, we can say that the reaction of elderly people to fear-based marketing differs not significant from younger groups of people. However, the healthcare market in the sector of old people is increasing a lot, as the people will get older; the demand for individual care is growing, and a rise of chronic diseases. Therefore it is important for marketers to communicate thrust and care in their advertisement, so that old be will be more responsive.

Benet, S., Pitts, R. E., LaTour, M., (1993). The Appropriateness of Fear Appeal use for Health Care Marketing to the Elderly: Is It OK to Scare Granny?. Journal of Business Ethics. V 12, Nbr 1, p.45-55.

Sirgy, M. J., Mentzer J. T., Rahtz D. R., Meadow H. L., (1991). Satisfaction with Health Care Services Consumption and Life Satisfaction among the Elderly. Journal of Macromarketing. V. 11 (1), p. 24.