Effect of Foreign Health Tourists’ Satisfaction from Destination on Word of Mouth Advertising in Tehran's Hospitals

Subject Areas : medical documents

Mohammad Javad Taghipourian ¹ (Assistance professor, department of Management, Chalous Branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran)
Umm al-Banin Eyni Mirhassanlo ² (MSc. Business management, Science and Research branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran)

Received: 2017-07-25 Accepted : 2017-11-24 Published : 2017-11-22

Keywords: Health Tourism, Satisfaction, word of mouth advertising, tourist attractions,

Abstract :

Introduction: Today, the relationship between economic growths with the development of healthcare is well known. Tourist satisfaction of a destination is one of the important factors which effect on word of mouth. So, identifying the influencer factors on health tourist satisfaction of a destination and their word of mouth could help improving of Tehran competition position in the health tourism. Method: For this purpose, based on the two models of Kitapci et al.(2014) and Araslı H, Baradarani (2014), was collected the views of health foreign tourists in Tehran, from countries such as the United States, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and other Asian and European countries , A total of 391 questionnaires were collected for analysis. For Validity test was used from confirmatory factor analysis and AVE and for reliability was used Cronbach's alpha which results shown confirmation? Results: Seven hypotheses have been approved but six hypotheses have been rejected that is the influence of empathy, knowledge, equipment and tangibility, accommodation equipment, environmental safety and transportation facilities on tourist satisfaction. Conclusion: Following the investigation, it was concluded that two types of factors: internal environment and the external environment have effect on the Tehran's foreign health tourists’ destination satisfaction that factors affecting the internal environment include: accountability of medical environment personnel and trust of medical environment personnel and factors affecting the external environment include: tourist attraction and a food and restaurant factor.

References:

1- Araslı H, Baradarani S. European tourist perspective on destination satisfaction in Jordan's industries. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2014; 109: 1416-25.

2- Rasoulzadeh Eghdam S, Mir Mohammad Tabar SA, Ali Poor S, Zaynivand Y. Opportunities and limitations of the tourism industry in Iran]. Studies of Sociology, 2016; 8 (30): 63-80. [Persian]

3- Ye BH, Qiu HZ, Yuen PP. Motivations and experiences of Mainland Chinese medical tourists in Hong Kong. Tourism Management, 2011; 32(5): 1125-7.

4- Bernal RL. The globalization of the health-care industry: opportunities for the Caribbean. Cepal Review: 2007.

5- Morowatisharifabadi A, Asadianardakani F. Offering health tourism development model with integrated approach of fuzzy TOPSIS and interpretive Structural Modeling in Yazd province]. Health Management, 2013; 17(55): 73-78. [Persian]

6- Lončarić D, Lončarić D, Markovic S. Health Tourism, Customer Satisfaction and Quality of Life: The Role of Specialty Hospitals.

7- Kitapci O, Akdogan C, Dortyol İT. The impact of service quality dimensions on patient satisfaction, repurchase intentions and word-of-mouth communication in the public healthcare industry. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2014; 25(148): 161-9.

8- Mirfakhredini SH, Mirfakhredini FS, SadrBafghi SM. Evaluation of Yazd medical tourists' satisfaction and prioritize the factors affecting it with the Fuzzy TOPSIS. Yazd University of Medical Sciences Journal, 2012; 2(5): 678-668. [Persian]

9- FatehiRad N, Som AP, Zainuddin Y. Service quality and patients’ satisfaction in medical tourism. World Applied Sciences Journal, 2010; 10(1): 24-30.

10- Taghvai M, Goudarzi M. Develop and prioritize strategies for the development of medical tourism (Case Study: Shiraz Metropolis)]. Research and Urban Planning, 2016 7(24): 1-22. [Persian]

11- Khaki G. research method with dissertation approach, Baztab, first printing; 2004. [Persian]

12- Hair JF, Ringle CM, Sarstedt M. PLS-SEM: Indeed a silver bullet. Journal of Marketing theory and Practice, 2011; 19(2): 139-52.

13- Sarwar A. Medical tourism in malaysia: prospect and challenges. Iranian journal of public health, 2013; 42(8): 795.

14- Johnston R, Crooks VA, Adams K, Snyder J, Kingsbury P. An industry perspective on Canadian patients' involvement in medical tourism: implications for public health. BMC public health, 2011; 11(1): 416.

15- Rojpalakorn R. A study into the typologies of international tourists and their motivation for staying on KHAO SARN ROAD (Doctoral dissertation, Silpakorn University

16- Amirtahmaseb S. The typology of inbound tourists visiting Iran. Lulea University of technology, Sudden.

17- GhafariAshtiani P; Abbasi M and Charsetad P. [Word of mouth advertising in electronic banking]. Tehran: Proceedings of the International Conference on Marketing of banking services; 2009. [Persian]

18- Afshani A. [Public Relations Role in the Development of Health Tourism], Uromie. In Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on regional health services in Iran, 2009; 13-14.

19- Khodayari R. Readiness of hospitals of Tehran University of medical science to attract medical tourists base on international Joint Commission Standards [Thesis in Persian]. Tehran: School of Management and Medical Information Sciences, Tehran University of Medical Science; 2010.

20- Alimardani, E. Evaluation of the factors influencing insurers mouth advertising in Alborz province. Business Administration, PNU Alborz; 2013. [Persian]