Marketing management in blood service enterprises

Abstract

In blood service, the volume of collected blood components depends on availability of donors. High demands require high product quality (safety, etc.). Blood component quality depends on the state of donors health. Storage periods of blood components are limited and require certain conditions. Blood service enterprises should be located within the reach of patients, and mostly in big cities with a large population. The quality and quantity of collected blood are affected by the level of morbidity, which leads to the withdrawal of donors and losses to blood service enterprises. Consequently, the blood centre performance largely depends on success of marketing activities: number of donors and recruitment campaigns. Simultaneously, blood donation by volunteers is possible only thanks to successful and systematic advertising about the benefits of donation for health. Maintenance of a suitable health state depends on retention campaigns and establishment of long-term relations between blood centres and donors via direct marketing. Sales promotion measures force people to donate blood for the first time and make it a stable habit to visit a blood centre every month. The safest blood is from a regular donor, and retention marketing helps convert a primary donor into a regular one. The article carries out a bibliometric analysis of Web of Science works for 1991-2023 that are devoted to marketing at blood service enterprises. The analysis proved some facts. Firstly, the blood service topic requires studing further (there are only 304 works). Secondly, we see a growth of research interest (32.5% of all works for 2019-2023) and an almost double increase in annual citations from 2019. Thirdly, scientists from the United States, Germany, Australia, England, France, and Spain lead in such studies. The article summarises problems of the Ukrainian blood service. They can be solved with marketing management (safety, managerial, informational, economic). The paper defines goals and objectives, main stages and principles of marketing management for blood service enterprises. A system of 20 criteria for evaluating the efficiency of marketing management measures at blood service enterprises has been developed. The research results form a basis for the general idea of marketing management in blood service enterprises.