Medicalization and Marketing

Abstract

Medicalization is the process by which aspects of the human condition, formerly considered nonmedical, are brought within the medical realm. Medical sociologists have asserted that medicalization is a prevalent contemporary sociocultural phenomenon that is actively promoted by pharmaceutical company marketing strategies and that has widespread negative societal effects. Medicalization has not been investigated from a business, marketing management, or macromarketing perspective. One of the principal implications of the medicalization thesis is that pharmaceutical marketing frequently acts to reduce human welfare. The central purposes of this article are to explain what evidence and argumentation has been deployed in medical sociology to implicate marketing practices in medicalization and to argue for the relevance of medicalization to the field of macromarketing. Medicalization is an intellectually robust concept of potential use when conducting macromarketing investigations into ethical and quality-of-life (QOL) aspects of the health care industries and quality of death and dying issues

O impacto da medicalização sobre os direitos humanos dos pacientes

“…De acordo com Conrad (2007), alguns fatores podem ser considerados como constituintes de uma ambiência propícia ao surgimento da medicalização no século XX, tais como: o aferrecimento de uma cosmovisão religiosa; o incremento da fé na ciência e na biotecnologia como produtora de soluções fáceis para complexos problemas humanos e o aumento do poder e prestígio da Medicina. Sendo assim, a despeito de se elencar alguns fatores causadores da medicalização, assinala-se que consiste em um fenômeno social multifatorial e complexo (Brennan, Eagle & Rice, 2010). Nesse sentido, vai além e enfatiza o caráter político do processo de medicalização.…”

“…Desse modo, é importante ressaltar que o conceito de medicalização encampado neste artigo parte de sua concepção como processo. Com efeito, o processo de medicalização compreende três aspectos: a) uso da linguagem médica para descrever um problema; b) adoção do referencial médico para entender o problema; c) emprego de medida médica para "tratar" o problema (Brennan, Eagle & Rice, 2010). Conrad (2007) enuncia que o processo de medicalização ultrapassa a ação de médicos na medida em que movimentos sociais podem concorrer decisivamente para o enquadramento de certo problema como médico.…”

Medical Ethics and Economic Medicalization

“…Campaigns are designed to put in place a public perception of illness and health consistent with the portfolio of prescription drug products on offer, e.g., Moynihan and Cassels (2005); Brennan et al (2010). Where bodies were once understood as normatively healthy and only sometimes ill, effective marketing has individuals seeing their bodies as inherently ill, and only able to be brought towards health with the effective medical treatment.…”

General Practitioners’ willingness to Pay for Continuing Medical Education in a Fee-for-service Universal Coverage Health Care System

“…This strategy can be used throughout a products' life cycle to facilitate product visibility and utilization, thus representing a marketing strategy with high return on investment potentials [4,5].…”