BRAND AWARENESS AMONG CUSTOMERS IN HEATHCARE INDUSTRY

This paper examines on brand awareness helps in creation of demand of hospital services. It states how brand awareness is created using trust, customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, hospital image and relationship commitment. Branding is an important strategy for differentiating a product from its competitors. It is a name logo trademark patent number or package design that is used to distinguish the firm product or services from the others. Through the brand awareness is identify a firm service in the hospital or recall its brand whenever he thinks about services. Brand awareness has to be thought of as a continuous range from an uncertain feeling that a brand is recognized to a belief that it is only one in the product class. This study investigates role of brand awareness of hospital services in building up different strategies. The CRM system in the health care organization leads to getting important customers‟ information and utilize this information to improve the business. Health care sectors are now trying to use an appropriate customer relationship management framework to create a trust between hospital and customers. The competitive situation enforces private hospitals to compete with each other to achieve as much market share as possible. Increase in the level of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in health care services can increase the chance of winning in market share among the other health care organizations. In this paper report, a framework will be identifying to determine the main factors that cause to improve the management of customer relationship in the health care using a multivariate measurement system. Episteme: an online interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary & multi-cultural journal Bharat College of Arts and Commerce, Badlapur, MMR, India Volume 4, Issue 1 June 2015 BCAC-ISSN-2278-8794 25 INTRODUCTION During the last two decades the emphasis has shifted from „Production‟ to „Business Realization‟. Today, the customer has the option to buy what he thinks he should and from whom, which he thinks is in his (customer‟s) best interest. Product development, technological improvement, cost optimization and excellent service facility are very important for any organization but their importance is only there if the customer appreciates it. An organization‟s strategies towards developing and maintaining sustainable relationship differ from one organization to another depending upon on certain factors, these include nature of business, its size, its market share, nature of product type, volume of sales, geographical concentrations, social – economic status and a wide spectrum of strategies that are practiced by customers driven organization with national and global perspectives. CRM helps the organization to identify customer needs and re – focus its strategy to serve him better. It helps the company to achieve business growth through development of competitive edge and excellence. Some of the major issues it addresses area  Identify the customer needs.  Help in rediscovering the customers and understanding them  Identify untapped business potential.  Identify fields requiring new technology and development  Identify strong and weak points of supplier.  Provide feedback to the supplier on his total operation.  Provide feedback and new information on competitors  Bench marketing to achieve global excellence  Action plan to make organization customer centric. Episteme: an online interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary & multi-cultural journal Bharat College of Arts and Commerce, Badlapur, MMR, India Volume 4, Issue 1 June 2015 BCAC-ISSN-2278-8794 26 customer needs/ understanding customer loyalty customer response & influence customer retention customer satisfaction customer service customer complaints The recent rapid increase in the amount of medical information has pushed hospitals to confront an essential issue which is how to utilize healthcare information technology to improve healthcare services quality. Customer relationship management system (CRMS) is an innovative technology which facilitates the process to acquire, develop, and maintain customer relationships more efficiently and effectively. Customer relationship management (CRM) for healthcare providers is an approach to learn all they can about their customers and prospects, to communicate relevant, timely information to them, and to track results to make program adjustments necessary . The rapid increase in the amount of medical information has pushed hospitals to confront a critical issue, which is how to utilize information technologies to manage large amounts of customer information and then improve the quality of customer services. The adoption of a customer relationship management system (CRMS) thus is increased globally among hospitals. Also, customer satisfaction is measured by healthcare providers as a key factor of strategy and an important determinant of long term feasibility and success under competitive situation . In addition, maintaining and increasing customer loyalty level is essential for any service company‟s long term success. CRM LIFE CYCLE The CRM lifecycle commences with combination of organization‟s system and centralization of customer information. The first phase of lifecycle is integration and the advantageous of this phase is the improvement of front office efficiency and CRM Episteme: an online interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary & multi-cultural journal Bharat College of Arts and Commerce, Badlapur, MMR, India Volume 4, Issue 1 June 2015 BCAC-ISSN-2278-8794 27 productivity. When this phase completed the result is the centralized source of related customer information. In this phase understanding about the company‟s customer will not be clarify, however the customer value is identified in this phase[7]. The second phase of the customer relationship management life cycle is the analysis phase which is most critical to conduct the CRM to success. For making an strategic decision for the organization the analysis phase helps to discover the casual relationships and figure out the customers behavior and identifying the trend and patterns of buying by the customers. The last phase of the CRM life cycle is action where the strategic decision carries out. Business processes caused to improved customer understanding through analysis. And it will be revised across customer facing activities including sales, marketing, and customer service. CRM IN HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATION The Figure 2 depicts how a CRM application can be customized to enable patient relationship management within health organizations. Taking a patient relationship management approach, healthcare providers can move beyond treating episodes of illness to enabling proactive care by establishing productive, long-term relationships with patients. Patient relationship management systems can cause the following improvement: • Increase patient satisfaction. Analyzing the performance of usual processes by passing Episteme: an online interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary & multi-cultural journal Bharat College of Arts and Commerce, Badlapur, MMR, India Volume 4, Issue 1 June 2015 BCAC-ISSN-2278-8794 28 time can omit the unnecessary tasks and cause improvements and increase customer satisfaction. • Coordinate the delivery of care. modified workflows can be developed to automate care coordination activities between provider organizations, which can help improve patient outcomes while increasing operational efficiency and reducing costs. • Proactively manage chronically ill patients. Clinicians can flag patients with specific chronic illnesses and automate targeted, proactive communications to inform them of upcoming educational offerings and remind them of ways to manage their illnesses. Brand awareness Creating brand awareness is an important object in marketing in order to be part of the consumer‟s consideration set. The consumer is seen as a passive audience, who has little time for choosing a product. Nevertheless the case hospital services might be a little different, even in this ambit consumers partly relay their decision on advertising, brand symbols and brand names as well. These names and symbols, overall reassign the brand to a certain product category, encourage the brand‟s position and help to preserve the brand awareness. Health care services are facing unique challenging to create brand awareness among customers. Customer relationship management is heavily depending on the creation of brand awareness among consumers. Generally hospital services challenging to advertise the services of hospitals some laws prohibits about this advertising. This study identifies five factors that influence the creation of brand awareness through successful customer relationships: trust, customer satisfaction, relationship commitment, brand loyalty, and hospital image. An empirical test of the relationships among these factors suggests that hospitals can be successful in creating image and positive brand awareness if they can manage their customer relationships well. LITERATURE REVIEW The previous studies conducted on the factors of trust, customer satisfaction, Episteme: an online interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary & multi-cultural journal Bharat College of Arts and Commerce, Badlapur, MMR, India Volume 4, Issue 1 June 2015 BCAC-ISSN-2278-8794 29 relationship commitment, brand loyalty and hospital image in hospital services. This helps to discuss the role of brand awareness. Trust Doney and Cannon (1997), in his study found that, trust as the perceived credibility and goodwill of a target party. In the health care context, trust can create an exchange environment in which a hospital can provide better care to its patients, or customers, while becoming or remaining profitable. Built on management capability, trust is a standard that hospitals and their employees offer patients. When patients complain about service, the hospital and its employees must do