Services Marketing in Dentistry – Knowledge, Practice, Attitude in Bosnia and Herzegovina -
Specificity of marketing in dentistry comes from the difficulty of defining the services, due to a combination of tangible, concrete, visible work of the dentist and the intangible, additional service, experienced by patient. Dental care cannot be separated from the subject of service–provider or object–user. Additionally, each service performance is unique and cannot be identically repeated. Services have many characteristics of the experience, which can be determined after use, and beliefs, which cannot be determined, even after use. Marketing tools and techniques are used to render the intangible tangible, to keep the quality of services and affect the movement of demand. In fact, the vast difference in patients’ satisfaction, which can be related to the physical enviroment or the process performed by dentist proffesional, can affect the credibility of particular dental practice. In this study, a field study has been conducted through a survey of one sixth of all private dental practitioners’ offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina with a view to understand their approach towards implementation of elements of services marketing and what obstacles and opportunities there can be in the transformation of dental services.