Marketing and social influences, hospital branding, and medical tourists' behavioural intention: Before‐ and after‐service consumption perspective

Abstract

The international growth of medical tourism requires hospital operators to adopt effective marketing practices to ensure survival and competitiveness. Although there is a burgeoning research on medical tourism, there is still limited knowledge about the roles of brand image and brand trust on medical tourists within the healthcare service context. This study investigates the influence of advertisements and social media communication on the hospital brand image and brand trust formation before consumption stage, and their impacts on medical tourists' perceptions and attitudes at the post-consumption stage in relation to service quality, satisfaction, and behavioural intention. Data was collected from 294 Chinese medical tourists and a structural equation modelling technique was used for testing the hypotheses. The findings revealed that advertisements and social media communication positively influence medical tourists' perception of hospital brand image, which influences their trust towards the hospital's brand. It was also found that medical tourists' perceived value and trust towards the medical staff mediates the relationship between their perceived service quality and satisfaction. Overall, the study contributes to the literature by providing evidence and understanding on hospital branding formation and its influence on the perceptions and attitudes of medical tourists before and after the consumption of the healthcare service.

Will destination image drive the intention to revisit and recommend? Empirical evidence from golf tourism

“…Service quality is a complex concept in the marketing discipline that is essential for the success and survival of an organisation (Cham and Easvaralingam, 2012;Cham et al, 2021a;Cheng et al, 2019;Son et al, 2018). Generally, service quality has been defined as customers' overall evaluation of the service experienced (Zeithaml et al, 1996).…”

“…Service quality is a complex concept in the marketing discipline that is essential for the success and survival of an organisation (Cham and Easvaralingam, 2012; Cham et al. , 2021a; Cheng et al.…”

Image and text presentation forms in destination marketing: An eye-tracking analysis and a laboratory experiment

“…Second, given that constructivism cognitive psychology theory, this study integrated SOR theoretical framework and affective-cognitive decision-making model to investigate the multiple mediating effects of perceived advertising effectiveness and destination affective image. Previous studies only explored the perceived advertising effectiveness ( Cham et al, 2022 ) or the destination affective image ( Tosun et al, 2015 ; Papadimitriou et al, 2015 ) as a mediator. Based on the dual processing paths of information in cognitive psychology and the affective-cognitive decision-making model, this study put the perceived advertising effectiveness and the destination affective image in the same research framework, and further elucidated the potential mechanism of different presentation forms in destination marketing.…”

“… Qu et al (2022) found that a good destination affective image positively and significantly influenced tourists’ intention to visit Hangzhou. The destination affective image affects tourists’ tourism experiences, and tourists’ evaluations of their experiences, in turn, affect post-travel behaviors such as revisit intentions, recommendation behaviors, and positive word-of-mouth ( Papadimitriou et al, 2015 ; Tosun et al, 2015 ; Afshardoost and Eshaghi, 2020 ; Huang et al, 2020 ; Cham et al, 2022 ). Based on the above analysis, the following hypotheses are proposed:…”

Impact of Customers Attitude Towards and Behavioural Intention to Shop at Brick-and-Mortar Stores: Moderating Role of Gender

“…The current study operationalises the construct "behavioural intention" as customers' intention to visit a B&M store for shopping. The literature suggests that various factors may impact customers' behavioural intention to buy a product/service, such as trust (Suhartanto, 2019), awareness (Lee, Goh, & Noor, 2019), and perceived value (Cham, Lim, & Sigala, 2021). The current study attempts to examine how various factors impact customers' behavioural intention to shop at a B&M retail store.…”