Marketing psychological services: Using client problem and solution perceptions to design help offering promotional appeals

This article presents a model for segmenting potential clients for behavior ally related services such as psychotherapy, related mental health services , and medical conditions requiring significant behavioral action and compli ance such as hypertension and diabetes. The model groups potential clients and caregivers as having beliefs about whether clients are responsible for their problems and responsible for their problem's solutions. Different cli ents' beliefs are shown to result in different social marketing promotional strategies whose goal is to foster timely and appropriate help seeking. Th e model is used to show the potential interactions between problem and solu tion perceptions and the different appeal strategies of problem or solution focus; fear, the credentials of the caregivers; and the use of modeling, s haping, and behaviorally explicit directions. Different appeals' ability to enhance or thwart help seeking is discussed. Implications for future resea rch are given. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.