Purpose - With the worldwide aging problem and the development of globalization, customers prefer to seek affordable medical services with the higher quality overseas. This new trend has urged some destination countries to improve their services for the more competitive advantages over other countries. Literature research indicate that medical quality and cost may be the key factors influencing global patients’ decisions. In the international environment, however, medical tourism destinations are selected due to cultural similarity between the hosting country and the customers’ own country. The more similarity perceived between the two countries leads foreign patients to choose the considering country as the destination for medical tourism. However, little research has been conducted on this topic. Thus, we empirically investigate how cultural similarity influences Chinese medical customers’ choice of the destinations. We also consider the factors related to medical competency and travel attribute which might affect customers’ decisions along with some moderating roles of disease types.
Research design, data, and methodology – We proposed a research model in order to confirm the relations among different variables of cultural similarity, medical competency, travel attractiveness, disease types, and destination choice. The questionnaire survey is processed in the more economically developed regions of China such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Jiangsu. Conditional logit regression is applied to analyze the data of 881.
Results - Results indicate that cultural similarity is the important predictor of Chinese customers’ decision to select a medical country. However, the effects of cultural similarity vary according to the disease types. We also find that medical competency and travel attractiveness influence their decisions with the moderating role of disease types.
Conclusions – Cultural similarity is the important factor that influences Chinese potential medical tourists’ decisions to select a destination. Marketing managers should consider the effects of cultural similarity when developing strategies for attracting Chinese medical tourists. Since medical competency and travel attractiveness are still the critical key elements for them to evaluate the destination countries, it is necessary to continuously improve medical service quality and facilities. The results also recommend that medical managers should sharpen their marketing strategies by segmenting Chinese potential customers in terms of disease types.

Abstract
 1. 서론
 2. 선행연구 고찰
  2.1. 의료관광
  2.2. 문화적 유사성
  2.3. 의료서비스속성
  2.4. 관광요소
  2.5. 인구통계학적 특성
  2.6. 질병종류
 3. 연구방법론
  3.1. 연구모형
  3.2. 변수의 조작적 정의
  3.3. 자료수집 및 검토방법
 4. 연구결과
  4.1. 조사대상자의 인구통계학적 특성
  4.2. 탐색적 요인분석 및 신뢰도분석
  4.3. 목적지 선택 요인에 대한 검토
 5. 연구결과 토론 및 시사점
  5.1. 결론
  5.2. 한계점 및 향후 연구
 References

• Jun Zhang(Assistant Professor, School of Global Business, Konkuk University, Korea) | 장준
• Hoon-Young Lee(School of Business, Kyung Hee University, Korea.) | 이훈영 Corresponding Author