Study on the Market Segmentation of inpatients

입원환자 시장세분화에 관한 연구

Purpose : This study aims to suggest application of patients DB to hospital marketing by performing market segmentation and selecting target market. Consequently help to establish suited strategy of marketing. Method : 14,072 patients hospitalized in a University Medical Center were recruited into this study. In order to classify the customer groups, cluster analysis was used with RFM(Recency, Frequency, Monetary) model, and 1-way ANOVA verified the differences among groups. And then, sociodemographical status, healthcare utilization and diagnosis(ICD-10) of each group were compared to draw a marketing strategy. Results : Four groups were classified through clustering analysis, and'high use and high profit' and'low use and high profit' groups were selected as a target market. The features of target market were as follows, the female proportion was high; used a private room; hospitalized through the emergency room; had operation; length of stay was long; had many comorbidity and cooperative treatment. There was difference in each feature of target market: as for the'high use and high profit' group, many patients were diagnosed with 'certain infectious and parasitic diseases'; and as for the'low use and high profit'group, the proportion of patients who purchased'industrial accident compensation insurance'and'auto insurance'was relatively high; many patients were diagnosed with'Injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes'. Conclusion : It is needed to establish'positioning' strategy by monitoring and communicating with'high use and high profit' group. And for the case of'low use and high profit' group, it is necessary to make a follow-up management and lead them to have a medical check-up.