With the ever-changing medical tourist environment, the study has delved into issues ranging from judged value on medical tourist service quality and its effect on the service level and recurring rate of return visit through the quantitative analysis ...
With the ever-changing medical tourist environment, the study has delved into issues ranging from judged value on medical tourist service quality and its effect on the service level and recurring rate of return visit through the quantitative analysis with the survey for a group of tourists from Japan, China, USA and the interview survey on medical specialist on tourists.
We utilized 415 pieces of effective questionnaires out of distributed 550 survey papers to tourists for medical purpose from Japan, China, USA in the survey executed from January 7 to March 7, 2012. We used SPSS ver 16.0 and AMOS 16.0
Verifying the Hypothesis 1 reveals the assertion that quality of medical service for tourists has effected upon the functional value has proven to be true except the cases on responsiveness and accessibility. And the assumption that the quality of medical service for tourists has effected upon the emotional value has proven to be true except the case on accessibility. Assessing the Hypothesis 2 shows the position that the quality of medical service for tourists has effected upon the satisfaction has proven to be true except the cases on corporeality. Analyzing the Hypothesis 3 finds the assumption that the functional and emotional value has effected upon the satisfaction has shown to have positive effect(+).
Delving into the Hypothesis 4 displays the assumption that the satisfaction has positive relationship with return visit has known to have the effect. Additional analysis on the medical service quality level for tourists per each country reveals that the accessibility for Japan and China is higher than that of the USA. And the analytical result on judged value per each country shows that the emotional value of Japan and China is greater than that of the USA but the difference in country level for functional value has been inconspicuous at best. And assessing result on satisfaction per country level and return visit rate shows that the satisfaction is greater in China and Japan that of the USA. And analytical outcome for medical service quality for tourists per each medical tourist type stipulates that the corporeality and responsiveness has been most apparent in the area of the tour for cosmetic surgery and the responsiveness has been the lowest in the tour for oriental alternative medicine. Verifying the difference on satisfaction per each medical tourist type and intention for return visit shows that the satisfactory level for the cosmetic surgery has been highest.
The survey result on the questionnaire done by the medical specialist on tourists reveals the necessity for adopting the following policy measures in order to facilitate medical tourist industry; new tourist package product development through the revision of medical stipulation, discriminating associated package tourist program, business infrastructure buildup for the institutional and policy readiness for medical tourist, institutionalized national certificate for the medical tour service and reparation system with legal safeguard.
Lessons learned from the study are; the necessity for the prompt issuance of Visa for medical tourists of American Citizens, the improvement of medical tourist and immigration control service and the development of various medical tourist packages. Matching marketing approaches are needed to meet the needs of various medical tourists per each diverse form.
The paper has its limitation in that it is confined to medical tourists of small numbers of target countries, relatively short survey period, relation among 4 parametric variables. The study shall be followed by the further analysis on the factors for medical tourists’ personal and societal effect.