From life insurance to safer sex – Reflections of a marketing man

Much of the writing on health in developing countries focuses on the public sector rather than the private market, and on providers rather than on consumers. A more consumer-oriented perspective would regard the transactions by which most people in most poor countries buy healthcare as the norm, just one among many purchases of a personal service which all of us, as consumers, have to make. This paper contends that asymmetric information is not confined to health and medicine, but is a common problem for consumers whatever the GDP of the country they live in, and however rich and poor they may be. Understanding how consumers overcome these problems yields insights into the ways in which providers have to market their services, and into what, if anything, governments and donors can do to extend, improve or regulate the private healthcare market.