Framing Health Care Messages: Why Interpersonal Context Matters
This post is excerpted from the Marketing Health Services e-newsletter, produced by the American Marketing Association.
When health care decisions are put to the test, marketers can find themselves at a crossroads.
For example, when promoting an organization’s weight loss program, is it more helpful to show images of patients suffering from diabetes—a negative, loss-based tactic—or a more positive photo of people enjoying a healthy, active lifestyle (i.e., what they could gain)?
The effectiveness of these dual approaches, referred to as loss-framed and gain-framed marketing, respectively, continues to be debated among health care marketers.