Medical tourism has becoming a topic of increase interest for both researchers and practitioners all around the world. The current article intends to propose a conceptual framework that presents antecedents and outcomes of consumers (patients) desires to undergo medical tourism practices, as well as moderators that can strengthen or weaken the established relationships. In the future the model should be tested in cross cultural context and so contribute to give more insights for researchers and mangers of medical tourism.

Korea is a relative newcomer in the global medical tourism market. The reported success from of forerunners including Thailand and Singapore inspired Korea to consider medical tourism as a path toward economic development. In a time of economic recession, medical tourism presented opportunities to create jobs and generate revenue. After the Korean government designated medical tourism as a new growth engine in 2009, several actions including allocation of revenue, enactment of promotional law, and establishment of specialist committees were taken. In 2007, 16,000 foreign patients were treated in Korea, generating US$68 million in revenue. By 2013 this number had risen to over 210,000 patients, contributing revenue of US$390 million. The Korean government has set a target of treating over 1 million patients by 2020. Competitors including Thailand, Singapore, and India take a large fraction of the Asian medical tourism market and are continuously innovating medical tourism services and seeking to improve delivery. New entrants such as Japan are also attempting to achieve a share of the market. Furthermore, the rapid development of medical technology and changing customer generate market turbulence. In order to gain a competitive advantage in this highly turbulent market, countries need to differentiate their destination brand identity from others in the market. This involves medical tourism products providing unique values to the customers being developed and advertised. Such a context increasingly requires medical tourism industry competitors to consider marketing perspectives and skills. Marketing in the healthcare field has a relatively short history and was traditionally strictly regulated, emerging as an important tool for creating competitiveness in the healthcare field from the early 1980s (Thomas, 2010). The challenge is clear for the Korean medical tourism industry – ensuring a trajectory of growth in medical tourism requires innovative marketing campaigns. Many hospitals and clinics have developed medical tourism products and actively advertised them to target nations. The Korean government has sought to establish a favorable environment for promoting medical tourism, with actions ranging from de-regulation to allow medical institutions to undertake marketing activities targeted at foreign patients, to hosting global conferences and exhibitions. Korea also undertook a thorough review of the marketing activities of its competitors. This presentation aims to identify the marketing actions undertaken by both the Korean government and medical institutions within Korea, using it as a case to highlight the broader issues concerning the marketing of medical tourism within a regional and global marketplace. Medical tourism marketing within Korea is analyzed using the 7 Ps of marketing mix. The longstanding marketing mix framework consisting of 4 Ps was criticized as an inappropriate tool for healthcare field. The framework’s elaboration by Tracy (2014) suggested the 7 Ps – product, price, people, packaging, positioning, place, and promotion. The 7 Ps of marketing mix must be systematically reviewed, managed and coordinated. Without a vision and blueprint, marketing activities surrounding 7 Ps will be undertaken separately and sporadically. Attention to coordinating seven elements of marketing mix will ensure the most effective allocation of limited marketing resources. Marketing has the capacity to increase competitive edge. However such marketing can be a financial drain, providing a poor return on investment as measured by tourist spending per advertisement dollar. Inefficiencies, poor positioning, and misuse of channels can lead to poor returns of investment and these questions must be asked at the organizational level of providers as well as the state level and national approaches.

With the rapid development of society, the additional requirements of life quality are progressively increasing. The world medical market is the world’s fastest growing with greatest potential and cause the attention of people. Especially South Korea is the world leader in Medical industry tourism in the world. Foreigners come to South Korea to do the various types of medical surgery are gradually increase, particularly in Chinese people. The subject of this study was the Chinese home page. The researcher collected Chinese translation problems in these sites and hope to improve the quality of related sites. So that To provide a good information environment for Chinese medical tourists, but also hope that Chinese websites can well play a role in outreach.

This study aims to explore the effect of three factors of Servicescape on customers’ emotion, perceived quality and image. The proposed model was tested in medical tourism context in Portugal, using a sample of 332 fully completed questionnaires. Findings reveal that ambient and design are the most important factors in formation Servicescape itself. Servicescape is an effective antecedent of customer image, perceived quality and pleasure-feeling. Finally, the article also provides managerial implications and suggests avenues for further research.

Research on medical tourism (MT) has focused more attention on the growing supply side of the market than the demand side (Gan & Frederick, 2013). There is a need therefore for more research to better understand the demand aspects of this growing industry. Most of the research on MT consumers focuses on two main factors for deciding to travel abroad for medical care: cost and quality of the service (Gan & Frederick, 2013; Lunt et al., 2011). Since both outcome and process healthcare service quality (SQ) remain a concern for medical tourists (Gan & Frederick, 2013; Lunt et al., 2011), it is important to understand medical tourists’ perceptions of their international patient experience. This study aims to investigate this topic, and address the demand side research gap, by content analyzing the online testimonials of medical tourists, who traveled to Thailand for medical care, through a SQ lens. By doing so, this research strives to provide a first-person perspective of Thailand’s MT SQ. No other studies in the MT literature have been identified that used this approach to investigate MT SQ.

본 연구는 산림기반형 한방치유 관광상품에 대한 수요자 욕구와 선호를 파악하여 향후 보다 표적화되고 차별화된 산림치유 관련 정책 수립과 한방치유 관련 프로그램의 개발을 위한 기초자료 제공을 목적으로 실시되었다. 서울에 거주하는 30대 이상 성인남녀 400명을 조사대상으로 성과 연령별, 거주지역별로 비례할당 표본추출법을 사용, 인터넷조사(CAWI)를 실시하여 총 317부가 최종 분석에 이용되었다. 산림기반형 한방치유 관광상품에 대한 이미지는 '산림욕, 숲속 걷기, 나무'가 다수(61.5%)를 차지했고, 선호 의견과 이용 의향은 각각 72.9%와 67.5%로 긍정적인 경향이 높았다. 단지 조성에 적합한 지역으로는 수도권이 53.6%, 강원도가 38.8%로 나타났다. 이용목적은 '스트레스 해소와 재충전', '산림휴양활동', '건강 유지 및 체력 증진'의 순이었다. 선호 치유요법은 '트래킹, 산책 등 걷기요법'이 가장 많았으며 '피트니스, 기체조 등 운동요법'이 그 뒤를 이었다. 상품선택 시 주요 고려 요인은 '이용 비용의 적정성', '음식과 이용 식자재의 적절성', '의료진 및 직원들의 친절성' 등으로 나타났으나 이용편의성과 의료서비스의 질, 관광활동 관련 요인 등 전 요인에 걸쳐 높은 점수를 기록하여 상품에 대한 수요자의 높은 기대수준을 보여주고 있다. 또한 인구통계학적 세분시장 별로 이용관련 요인들에 대한 선호에 차이점을 보이고 있어 관련 상품의 기획과 운영 시 차별화 되고 세분화된 수요자 욕구를 반영하는 것이 필요할 것으로 보인다. 그러나 본 연구는 상이한 수요자 선호를 파악함에 있어 인구통계학적 세분 시장만을 규명함으로써 가장 기초적인 단계에 머무른 한계점을 지니고 있어 후속연구에서는 다차원적이고 복합적인 수요자 욕구에 대한 보다 정교화된 규명이 요망된다.

본 연구는 국제자유도시 제주의 친환경 소재 휴양복을 고찰해 봄으로써 앞으로 제주 의료관광 산업에서의 부가가치 및 수익 창출에 기여하고자 수행되었다. 의료관광 상품에 고품격 맞춤형 휴양복을 포함시킴으로써 관광객들이 제주에서 휴양복 착용의 쾌적한 체험을 하고 기념품으로 가져감으로써, 제주에 대한 좋은 인상과 추억을 갖게 된다면, 또다시 제주를 관광 목적지로 선택할 것이다. 잘 개발된 갈옷 휴양복은 다른 갈옷 상품과도 잘 매치될 수 있으므로 제주 문화상품 갈옷의 추가 구매 효과도 전망할 수 있다. 아울러 개발 휴양복의 사이즈 체계와 패턴 그레이딩을 구축을 통해 상품생산의 효율성이 상대적으로 매우 취약한 지역 업체의 애로사항을 해결하고자 하였다. 본 연구의 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 제주지역 갈옷업체를 조사하여 애로사항 및 개선점을 고찰하였다. 둘째, 제주 의료관광을 위한 갈천 소재 휴양복을 정의하고 문헌 몇 시장조사, 디자인 논의 등의 결과를 반영하여 타당성 있는 대표 디자인을 선정하였다. 셋째, 생산표준화를 위한 상품제작 사이즈체계를 정립하고 패턴그레이딩을 구축하여 제안하였다.

Purpose - The effect of regional culture has been acknowledged for decades. However, very little research takes it as an important issue in the medical tourism service decision process. This study focuses on regional culture to identify customers’ preference for medical tourism in the international environment. It is proposed that regional culture may work as an critical moderator in the international medical tourism destination choice process. Especially, the destination attributes may vary according to regional culture. Research design, data, and methodology - By the questionnaire survey, the sample is collected from 2,041 potential Chinese residents in different regions of China. Regression analysis is constructed to test the effect of regional culture on Chinese customers’ destination preference. Results - Results imply that regional culture plays a critical moderating role in the destination choice process. Results also indicate that destination attributes including medicine and travel characteristics are the important predictors of destination preference. Conclusions - This study provides the fundamental base to use regional culture as a descriptive variable for segmentation when establishing an effective marketing strategy. Furthermore, this research suggests that different strategies relied on destination attributes should be made to attract more Chinese customers for the development of medical tourism industry.

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.