Contribution of the marketing communication strategy to the hospital performanceof healthcare institutions in the city of LubumbashiApport de la stratégie de communication marketing à la performance hospitalière des institutions de soins de santédans la ville de Lubumbashi

The practice of marketing communication has long remained almost non-existent in the health care management sector for essentially ethical reasons, as long as the demand for the health care service was greater than its offer. Healthcare institutions did not feel the need to develop strategies to attract and retain patients. And yet, health organizations are a service provider that requires as much as other areas, the application of management science, including marketing. Changes in the modern social and economic environment require all service providers to behave and market-oriented to adapt to their respective markets, increasingly competitive markets. And one of the axes of this adaptation is their openness to marketing communication strategies... That is why, in this article, we want to reflect on the issues that today constitute the application of marketing communications strategies by health care institutions. This explanatory study was carried out on the contribution of the marketing communication strategy to performance in public and private hospitals in Lubumbashi city. The results of this study indicate that the appropriation of the marketing communication strategy has a positive and significant impact on the hospital performance (24% of the link rate between the marketing communication strategy and the hospital performance). In addition, the contextual pressure has a positive and significant impact on the success of the marketing communication strategy and the performance of the health care institutions (12% of the link rate between the environmental context and the implementation of the marketing communication strategy). The study highlights the need for healthcare institutions to implement the communication strategy in order to be successful in a dual goal of promoting health and patient satisfaction in addition to a significant competitive advantage.