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Medical tourism services: The role of patients’ perceived health consciousness and value

  • Research Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Service Science Research

Abstract

Medical tourism is traveling to another country for medical services. The transformation of global healthcare system is opening the floodgates for medical tourism. Many factors influence the decision to seek medical tour overseas. Health value in terms of biologically given and personally acquired potentials is based on patient health consciousness, pushing individual take healthy action. The aim of this study is to examine the factors (e.g., consumer’s health consciousness and perceived health value) that affect the satisfaction of medical tourism services. Also, the study considers demography character (e.g., age, gender, income level and health insurance) as moderating effect between satisfaction and loyalty. The data was collected 427 medical tourists’ data for inbound Korean medical tourist. The results show importance of motivating health value regarding medical tourism service’s satisfaction and loyalty while no impact on patients perceived satisfaction and loyalty. Through the results, medical tourism manager will need to develop medical tourism services that can stimulate consumer health values.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Business school, Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea

    TianBao Ren, Hyowon Hyun & Jungkun Park

Authors
  1. TianBao Ren
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  2. Hyowon Hyun
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  3. Jungkun Park
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hyowon Hyun.

Additional information

TianBao Ren is a doctoral student majoring Marketing at Hanyang University in Korea. She holds a Bachelor degree from Tianjin Foreign University in China. Her research domain includes medical service, Chinese product, and mobile business.

Hyowon Hyun is a doctoral student in Marketing major at Hanyang University in Korea. She received Master degree from Hanyang University. Her research domain includes emotion in service settings, mobile payment and technologies, and big data analytics for consumer behavioral analysis.

Jungkun Park is a Professor at Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea. He received his Master’s Degree in Economics in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Doctoral Degree in Retailing and Consumer at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research appeared in many academic journals. Dr. Park’s major research area is technology and consumers in retailing covering electronic, mobile and ubiquitous commerce consumer behavior.

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Ren, T., Hyun, H. & Park, J. Medical tourism services: The role of patients’ perceived health consciousness and value. J Serv Sci Res 9, 179–195 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12927-017-0009-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12927-017-0009-z

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