Abstract
This study empirically examines the effects of medical tourists’ experience of the decision-making process through a patient’s prior, actual, and post experience after having received the medical services. The research model and associated hypotheses were tested using a structural equation modeling based on data collected from 188 medical tourists who received care in Busan, South Korea. The findings of the study indicate that patients’ experience in medical tourism pre-search (reputation, searching information, and communication) has a partially positive effect on their experience (costs, care quality, and supporting system and/or information) and patients’ current experience during the medical tour process has a positive effect on post-experience (relationship building, recommendation, and feedback). The results of this study provide new insights about how key players (e.g., hospitals, medical travel agencies, hotels, and the medical tourists themselves) in medical tourism can effectively help managers identify medical tourists’ needs based on the decision-making process of prior, current, and post-experience of medical tourists.
Highlights
Medical tourism has emerged as a result of consumers being exposed to a wider range of choices of medical services and exponential growth in global healthcare market [1]
The global growth of the medical tourism industry is most prominent in Asia, with Singapore, Thailand, South Korea, and India being well known as medical tourism countries
For H1-1, H1-2, and H1-3 tests, patients’ experience of their decision-making process before care, the standardized path coefficient between reputation and costs related with medical tourism (H1-1), care quality (H1-2), and supporting system and/or information (H1-3) were .030, .112, and .094, respectively
Summary
Medical tourism has emerged as a result of consumers being exposed to a wider range of choices of medical services and exponential growth in global healthcare market [1]. A combination of the terms “medical” and “tourism” [1], its main target is patients who visit other regions or countries for medical treatment. According to the Allied Market Research [4], the net worth of the medical tourism market worldwide is estimated at $61.172 billion as of 2016 and is expected to increase to $165.3 billion by 2023. The global growth of the medical tourism industry is most prominent in Asia, with Singapore, Thailand, South Korea, and India being well known as medical tourism countries. In a report “Estimates of the South Korea Medical Tourism Market and Expenditure to 2020,” Orbis Research [5] presented that highly skilled professionals, advanced medical devices, and well-established infrastructures are the factors that contribute to the rapid growth of medical tourism in South Korea
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