Person Centricity: Where Healthcare Meets Marketing

Abstract

An ongoing shift from disease-centric to person-centric healthcare brings the concept of person centricity to the forefront. Given the conceptual ambiguity in the healthcare literature, this research aims to reconceptualize person centricity from a service marketing perspective by building on the first principles of marketing. This research combines insights from in-depth interviews (n=48) with different healthcare actors and a scoping review (n=27). The findings reveal that person centricity involves meeting patients' unique preferences and needs in three domains (i.e., partnership, experience, and connection). These preferences and needs vary between and within persons. The findings also indicate that person centricity's implementation is challenged by the coexistence of different logics regarding its advantages (competitive versus transformative logic) and costs (investment versus expense logic). This research provides guidance to researchers and practitioners in healthcare and beyond.