Choosing a hospital: analysis of consumer tradeoffs.

In today's competitive health care industry, hospital administrators and marketers must determine how important various product/service attributes are to potential consumers and how those attributes influence consumer choice decisions. The authors outline an approach (the analytic hierarchy process) that can be used to assess or predict health care choice decisions by consumers. The analytic hierarchy process is a method for analyzing consumer choice behavior whereby a hierarchical structure is used to determine the relative preferences of consumers for health care alternatives. Marketing strategies based on the study findings are suggested.