Antecedents of hospital brand image and the relationships with medical tourists’ behavioral intention

Abstract

Purpose Medical tourism is growing rapidly in the recent years in various Asian countries. The success of the hospitals engaged in medical tourism largely depends on their abilities in maintaining the repeating customers and to attract new customers. Hence, the purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of word-of-mouth and social media on hospital brand image. It also attempts to examine the relationships between brand image, perceived service quality, patient satisfaction and behavioral intention. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire survey was used to collect data from 386 medical tourists to test the proposed model. All the measurement scales adopted in this study were adapted from the existing literature. The data collected in this study were analyzed using both SPSS and structural equation modeling approach via AMOS. Findings The findings from the structural analysis indicated that both word-of-mouth and hospital-generated social media have a significant impact on brand image. Hospital brand image positively influences medical tourists’ perception of service quality, and their perceived service quality is significantly related to their satisfaction, which in turn, leads to their behavioral intention. Originality/value This study is one of the few studies that considers the importance of hospital’s brand image in influencing medical tourists’ perceptions on the quality of healthcare services that they experienced during their medical trips. This research study also raises the significance of word-of-mouth communication and social media that influence hospitals’ brand image, which has been neglected by many studies.

The Mechanism of Word-of-Mouth for Tourist Destinations in Crisis

“…Specifically, it is necessary to pay attention to creating a good social environment to enhance the emotional image that matches the self-image of tourists (H. Zhang, 2018). Meanwhile, the result shows that WOM is an important predictor of tourists' behavioral intentions, which is consistent with previous studies (Cham et al, 2016;Hossain & Kim, 2018;Jalilvand et al, 2013). This means that WOM behavior has an important impact on premium behavior and willingness to revisit, which suggests that incentive WOM marketing should be employed to promote tourists' willingness to revisit.…”

The Factor Structure of Medical Tourist Satisfaction: Exploring Key Drivers of Choice, Delight, and Frustration

“…Furthermore, Pan and Chen (2014) found that satisfaction of medical tourists was driven by the following four factors: (1) advanced equipment of a medical institution, (2) professional and skillful technicians, (3) professional and reliable physicians, and (4) the hospital medical quality. Jaapar et al (2017) corroborated the quality–satisfaction relationship in a specific medical tourism context, that is, dental tourism, while Cham et al (2016) obtained the same results in a study of hospital brands.…”

“…In fact, patient satisfaction has been considered in the same terms as customer satisfaction (Rad et al, 2010) and can be defined as the extent to which patients’ expectations are met by the health-care service providers (Debono & Travaglia, 2009). Accordingly, several studies from the medical tourism literature focused on customer satisfaction, expectations, and/or perceived quality of different medical tourism services provided by health-care facilities, such as hospitals and medical clinics (e.g., Cham et al, 2014; Cham et al, 2016; Chou et al, 2012; Guiry et al, 2013; Guiry & Vequist, 2011; Han & Hyun, 2015; Jaapar et al, 2017; Lertwannawit & Gulid, 2011; Prajitmutita et al, 2016; Rad et al, 2010; Wang, 2017).…”

Purchasing Behavior of Organic Food among Chinese University Students

“…Product trust was measured with three items adapted from Choe et al's scale [106]. Word of mouth is measured with five items developed by Cham et al's scale [107].…”