Healthcare Services Marketing: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Directions

Purpose – This paper aims to review articles on healthcare services marketing published in the past decade to identify research gaps created in the backdrop of the recent pandemic and propose a future research direction necessitated by the global crisis. Design/methodology/approach – A literature review is performed based on the search term “healthcare services marketing” applied to the Scopus database, resulting in a final pool of 65 articles. The authors conducted the analysis based on Callahan’s 6 W framework (2014). Findings – In the last decade, healthcare service marketing research emphasised medical tourism and concentrated on service quality. Towards the end of the last decade, the research on online healthcare service marketing saw a rise indicating a trend in the field. Based on this and considering the recent pandemic, the paper proposes possible topics for future research. Originality/value – The growing importance of global healthcare services is well-understood post-pandemic, and there is a growing interest in this area. A comprehensive review exploring topics researched in healthcare services marketing in the preceding decade before the pandemic will help identify research trends that will need further exploration to handle future global health crises.