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Discusses a collaborative study between Mayo Clinic's departments of human resources and marketing to identify the factors that influence candidates' decisions to accept or decline job offers and the reasons behind staff resignations. Study aimed to increase the effectiveness of employee recruitment advertising, streamline its interviewing process, and improve the overall management of new employee recruitment. (Author/GCP)

The Dept of Conceptual Surgery at the Mayo Clinic requested that the Mayo Foundation's marketing department develop a brochure to help attract surgery patients. However, counteracting declining rates of surgery utilization would probably require more than a simple brochure, including improving patient satisfaction rates and increasing efficiency so that surgical fees could be lowered. Determining the underlying cause of the low department occupancy rates and working to correct any identified problem areas is the real challenge facing the marketing staff.

The article presents an exploration into consumer attitudes and knowledge regarding terminology used in distinguishing medical services such as "primary care" as compared to "family care," "aesthetic surgery" as compared to "cosmetic surgery," or "hospitals" as compared to "medical centers." Through a sociolinguistic quantitative method and marketing qualitative frameworks, the rational and emotional perceptive associations of several terms for services are discussed. The semantic affective dimension measurement system is also described and utilized extensively.