This article studies the nature of differentiation in the market for medical tourism facilitators in the USA. Medical tourism facilitators in the USA resemble a monopolistically competitive industry. They choose to differentiate their services in several ways, including by the scope of countries and hospitals which they use, the scope of the treatments in which they specialize, the extent of involvement of medical professionals in the company, and the kinds of ancillary services they offer. The authors perform an exploratory study of the differentiation among 46 such firms. Using principal-components analysis, they detect three components: an emphasis on providing a broad selection of destinations, an emphasis on physician's concerns, and an emphasis on the travel aspects of medical tourism. Cluster analysis separates the firms' profiles into six types.

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this study is to analyze Singapore's diverse cardholders in search of variations among demographic groups, credit card profiles, and their perceptions with regard to credit card ownership and use. It then aims to discuss possible reasons governing Singaporeans' credit card ownership and use. Design/methodology/approach -A survey was conducted, decision trees were then constructed using Chi-square automatic interaction detection algorithm (CHAID) and SPSS software AnswerTree to examine the association between the number of credit cards (target variable) and the demographic characteristics, perceptions and other credit card-related variables. Findings -The number of credit cards was found to be significantly influenced by income and gender as well as perceptions that include "credit card leads to overspending", "savings as payment source", "unreasonable interest rates", "credit card as status symbol". The number of credit cards was also affected by credit card-related variables such as missing payments sometimes, frequency of use, entertainment expenditures, and petrol purchase. Practical implications -This research provides an in-depth understanding of Singaporean multiple cardholders, thus it is useful in designing marketing strategies for card-issuers as well as anti-debt strategies for policy-makers in Singapore. Originality/value -Despite the importance of consumer credit, virtually no literature or research exists on the ownership and use of credit cards in Singapore, so this paper intends to close this gap. Further, by combining the demographics, cardholders' profiles and usage patterns with the respondents' perceptions concerning credit card ownership and use, our study offers a richer analysis to explain consumer behavior than previous literatures.

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This study relates consumers' attitudes toward medical tourism to a number of consumer characteristics, such as age, education, income, and insurance status. Principal components analysis of the attitudes of 289 consumers from various communities of North Carolina resulted in three attitude-related factors: economic, treatment-related, and travel-related. Major findings include: (a) the uninsured and low-income consumers are more sensitive to economic factors than the insured and the middle-income consumers; (b) the 51- to 64-year-olds are less motivated by economic factors than young adults; (c) surprisingly, the better one's health, the more one is motivated by treatment-related factors.