Prioritizing of marketing mix elements effects on patients’ tendency to the hospital using analytic hierarchy process

Background: Marketing mix in hospitals and healthcare organizations predispose medical needs, gain market share and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of these centers. This study aimed to prioritize the effective marketing mix elements on patients’ tendency to the hospitals using analytic hierarchy process (AHP).Materials and methods: This is a descriptive and applied study. The required data were collected by a paired comparisons questionnaire. Twelve experts in the field of health services were chosen and their viewpoints analyzed by AHP with the Expert Choice 11 software.Results: The prioritization of the main factors from experts viewpoints showed that in public hospitals, price (0.386), services (0.358), physical assets (0.306), place (0.305), process management (0.302), people (0.294), and promotion (0.287); and in private hospitals, services (0.373), physical assets (0.335), promotion (0.327), place (0.318), process management (0.314), people (0.308) and price (0.255) were placed in grade first to seventh, respectively.Conclusion: Considering the key role of services marketing mix elements in patients’ tendency to hospitals, experts’ viewpoints were assessed carefully, and the main elements of marketing mix and their parameters were ranked based on their importance.