Economic Review

Abstract

This research investigates the relationships between the three dimensions of medical travelers’ perceptions; ‘Perceived Congruence of Demand-Supply Medical Facilities’, ‘Perceived Quality of Demand-Supply Medical Facilities’, and ‘Brand Image of Hospitality Facilities’, and the dependent construct; ‘Destination Brand Choices’. This study found the statistically significant impacts of the medical travelers’ three dimensional perceptions on medical tourism brand choice. In specific, this research contributes the theory development as the confirmation for the aspects that the medical travelers would select the medical/ health service provider (s) by the perceived congruence between demand and supply of medical facilities, the perceived quality for the congruence of demand and supply of medical facilities, and the image of destination brand in terms of prompted hospitality facilities. Market practitioners can employ the research results to adjust the market strategies and programs, especially for developing and improving the medical travelers’ perceptions toward hospitals and/or doctors, and especially for the country image of Thailand. Similarly, the policy makers or relevant government agents should be concerned the importance of the perceptions of medical travelers’ on the positive congruence and quality of demand and supply in terms of medical facilities, and Thailand's brand image. Although the quantitative method could not provide the tests of moderating impacts of ‘Agency's Roles’, ‘Roles of Internet/ Online Contact’, and ‘Perceived Consistence of Health Insurance System’, the exploratory qualitative data present the important implications for these variables. Contemporary medical tourism markets, the medical travelers search information or contact the medical service providers through internet/ online. The medical tourism agency is important for the medical travelers. Taking the medical tourism services away from hometown, the medical tourism agents can facilitate the travelers to search destinations; country, hospital, and doctors. The roles of insurance system on the destination selection, especially for the Western medical travelers, are important. Moreover, from the exploratory data, a customer's ‘Brand Trust’ toward the country or hospital destination can be a suspected mediating construct of the examined relationships between the three dimensional perceptions and destination brand choice. This mediating construct's roles should be investigated in the further study.