Medical tour blends two classic service industries, medical service and travel service, into a single one and it has been spotlighted as an innovative tour program across the world. Medical tour industry, based on the cutting-edge medical facilities a...
Medical tour blends two classic service industries, medical service and travel service, into a single one and it has been spotlighted as an innovative tour program across the world. Medical tour industry, based on the cutting-edge medical facilities and technology, attracts patients from around the world. This growth engines industry provides the consumers not only with medical care but also with recreation, leisure and cultural activities, thereby improving the national competitiveness through medical facilities, medical devices, insurance and human resources and making a significant contribution to the acquisition of foreign currencies. This field is considered to be the 21th century kind of a national strategic industry.
When analyzing the consumer satisfaction and consumer loyalty in the field of medical tour service, the precedence is to evaluate whether satisfactory service is being provided to the consumers and this assessment examines both the quality of service and consumer satisfaction. This present article carries out separate evaluation for the quality of medical care service the quality of travel service. Then, this research studies further into their effects on the consumer satisfaction and consumer loyalty by those who have used Korean medical service.
In order to efficiently accomplish the research goals, this article attempted an empirical study based on precedent study and literature research. At the first stage, the concept of medical tour has been redefined through precedent study and literature research, followed by theoretical inquiry into the quality of medical service, quality of travel service, consumer satisfaction and consumer loyalty. The second stage was to design a questionnaire that well demonstrates how the quality of medical service and quality of travel service influence the consumer satisfaction and loyalty. This research carried out a survey of those who have experienced Korean medical tour service at three medical institutions in Seoul, Daejeon and Jeju in Korea, for about a month from September 29, 2014 to October 31, 2014. Out of 200 questionnaires given out, removing the unanswered and unsatisfactory responses, a total of 158 questionnaires underwent data coding and analysis to investigate how the quality of medical service and quality of travel service affect the consumer satisfaction and loyalty of the medical tourists.
The empirical analysis in this article yields the following findings. First, among the three types of factors constituting the quality of medical service, human factors (good communication system, provision of promised medical service, quick problem resolution, access to hospital information and hospitality of the medical care staff) had the greatest influence on the consumer satisfaction and consumer loyalty of the medical service consumers, followed by less influential expenditure factors (reasonable pricing and benefits from medical insurance) and physical factors (level of facilities, quality of medical devices, quality of technology, credibility of the hospital). As the human factors are the most significant keys to the consumer satisfaction and consumer loyalty of the medical tourists, the hospitals that provide medical service are to make every effort to satisfy their consumers through setting up good communication system through their coordinators, providing promised medical care and quick problem resolution, making the hospital information accessible to the consumers and constantly monitoring hospitality of their healthcare providers.
Second, among the three factors that determine the quality of tour service, selection environment (accommodation facilities and variety of the tour programs) had the major influence on the consumer satisfaction of the medical tourists, followed by less influential factors including shopping environment (types of goods available for shopping, shopping facilities, road signs, pricing of shopping goods, accessibility of transportations and Korean Wave) and accommodation environment (types of food, taste of the food, neatness of accommodation facilities, food hygiene, travel guide, signs of accommodation facilities). Selection environment is most significant because, as for the medical tourists, the primary goal is to receive the medical care service, yet the same tourists have a tendency to make full use of accommodation facilities and tour programs available to them for maximize recreation in their free time. Therefore, in order to attract the medical tourists, it is vital to design a tour program that guarantees open and wide selections and free time.
Third, more than 4.32 millions of Chinese tourists, so-called Youkers, visited Korea in the year of 2013, taking up the largest percentage, 35.5%, in the number of foreigners visiting Korea. Nevertheless, the level of satisfaction with their tour programs ranks the lowest and this below-average figure leads to low revisit intention and low intention to recommend to others. This present article inferred that the three factors that make up the quality of travel service, including selection environment, shopping environment and accommodation environment are the major determinants in the consumer satisfaction and consumer loyalty in the field of medical service. The findings of this study reflect the common characteristics of the Chinese tourists, who are fanatical about shopping and fascinated by cuisine. As for them, selection environment is the most influential factor in the quality of travel service because the Chinese tourists are seeking a program that goes over the established guided tour routines and let them experience a wider range of selections. In this study, the relationship between the quality of travel service and the consumer satisfaction and consumer loyalty is different from the other preceding researches. Such differences mean that medical service consumers purchase compound goods and they practice more sophisticated quality assessment compared to the consumers who purchase general medical care or other single commodities.
Fourthly, the major obstacles faced during this study were the lack of credible statistics in the field of medical service and difficulties while conducting the survey. Cooperation from the related organizations was inadequate and the foreign patients were reluctant to participate in the survey due to their cultural background which values individual’s privacy. There has been only one assessment of medical care statistics under the provision of the government and it is titled “Statistics on International Patients in Korea” by Korean Health Industry Development Institution, an affiliated organization of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. In addition, Korea Tourism Organization, an affiliated organization of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, conducted a satisfaction research for those who have experienced Korean medical tour and another research on Korean medical care and tour service in the year of 2012. Unfortunately, the results have not been published to the public until the present time in 2014. From now on, we are to produce comprehensive statistics systematically by establishing cooperation among related departments. This will help us understand the size and characteristics of this medical tour market and appreciate the medical tour as a blending industry. Furthermore, in order to respect the culture of the foreign consumers and value each individual’s privacy, it is strongly recommended to make use of the highly developed Korean IT technology and develop a computer program or applications that will help conduct a survey while providing full protection for the patient’s personal information.
Last of all, this research carried out comparative study by categorizing the quality of medical service into either a medical or travel sector. The significance lies in the fact that this research design was an attempt to carry out a detailed analysis on the varied motivations and derives of the medical tour consumers.
In order to secure the competitiveness of the medical tour industry, it is important to recognize that the medical tour has a more sophisticated assessment structure than any other single service and investigate into how each factor of the quality of medical service and quality of travel service affects the consumer satisfaction and consumer loyalty.