Designing a branding model for providing healthcare services in Iran

Branding in the field of healthcare services leads to transparency and utility in the type of services, differentiation of services in the minds of patients and their trust in health centers.

Therefore, the present study was conducted to provide a branding model in the field of healthcare services.

We used a mixed method approach to develop a branding model for providing healthcare services.The study population for qualitative phase included 20 academic and organizational experts using snowball sampling and Delphi technique. For quantitative phase, 830 people referred to health centers were selected as service recipients and 415 medical staff were selected as health care providers. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by face, content, and structural validity and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha of 0.96. Quantitative data were presented by EQS software version 6.1 with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and usingstructural equations.

The results of factor structure and measurement equivalence the branding of healthcare services with six main themes of competitive position, brand equity, brandaccessibility, brand consolidation in the minds of clients and the market, branding strategies, and consumer-brand relationship in healthcare services branding with 19 sub-themes for clients and providers (CFI=0.9, TLI=0.8, RMSEA= 0.085, SRMR= 0.049)had a good fit and the internal consistency of the items had significant levels(P-value<0/05).

According to the research results, the six main themes of competitive position, brand equity, brand accessibility, brand consolidation in the minds of clients and the market, branding strategies, and consumer-brand relationship with 19 sub-themes can be used in the field of health services branding.