Recently, medical tourism is emerging as a new trend in the tourism industry. Because many people are attention to wellness or well-being in the world after new-millenium. and rising health care costs and longer waiting times are inducing patients to...
Recently, medical tourism is emerging as a new trend in the tourism industry. Because many people are attention to wellness or well-being in the world after new-millenium. and rising health care costs and longer waiting times are inducing patients to seek treatment overseas.
This trend is popular in some asian countries such as Thailand, India, Singapore and so on. It creates valid additional economic value for their countries. those countries emphasize on developing various medical tour products to enrich their national image and achieve economical benefit at the same time. Korea also has started promotion and marketing for medical tourism to develop tourism industry but there are few visitors for korean medical tourism. Therefore this study attention to image to develop medical tourism. Because image has been shown to be an important influence in the selection of tourist destination. So this study purposed to analyze the influence of country image, destination image of korea on medical tourism image and intension behavior by foreign visitors which is potential demand for korean medical tourism. The results of analysis are as follows.
first. depend on continent, the image of korean medical tourism is different and many foreigners are still don't know about korean medical tourism.
second, country image has influences on destination image, medical image and intension behavior.
third, cognitive image and affective image toward destination have influence on medical tourism image and intension behavior.
lastly, based on the results above, country image has significant influences on destination image, medical tourism and intension behavior.