Thailand - Service quality has a direct impact on medical tourists' loyalty

According to new academic research on medical tourists in Bangkok, service quality has a positive relationship with value, satisfaction and brand trust. And it has a direct impact on medical tourists' behavioral loyalty.

‘International Tourists' Service Quality Perception And Behavioral Loyalty Toward Medical Tourism In Bangkok Metropolitan Area’ has been published in The Journal of Applied Business Research. The independent research was by Assistant Professor Aurathai Lertwannawit of Suan Dusit Rajabhat University, and Associate Professor Nak Gulid of Srinakharinwirot University. The Office of the National Research Council of Thailand and Suan Dusit Rajabhat University sponsored it.

This research assesses the relationship between service quality, value, satisfaction, and brand trust on the behavioral loyalty of international tourists acting as medical tourists toward private hospital medical services in the Bangkok Metropolitan area. A quantitative study was performed using 400 international tourists who used medical service from private hospitals in Thailand. Most of the respondents used services from BNH Hospital.

Medical tourists ranked several factors for deciding to use medical services at the hospital according to order of importance: medical quality, value of services, patient safety and security, location, international patient marketing, international patient management, attention to unique needs of the medical traveller, and transparency.

Service quality has a positive relationship with value, satisfaction, and brand trust -which also has direct impact on medical tourists' behavioral loyalty. In addition, value, satisfaction, and brand trust have an effect on the relationship between service quality and behavioral loyalty. Nationality does not have any effect on the relationship between service quality and value, satisfaction, and brand trust.

The research model is an extended service quality-loyalty model by insertion of brand trust from relationship market research. The results of this study provide empirical evidence better suited to the research model in a medical tourism context, in which distance between the service provider and the customer is relatively high. The researchers suggest that brand trust plays an important role in creating loyalty and also in leveraging the relationship from service quality and value to loyalty.

Brand trust is an important mechanism in generating both attitudinal and behavioral aspects of loyalty. The main rationale that explains this phenomenon is that tourists have to travel to a distant country in order to receive medical services, which provides a direct challenge to the individual. Consequently, a high level of brand trust can reduce uncertainty. Brand trust is important when tourists travel from a developed country to use a service in a developing country where they think the overall level of technology and knowledge is relatively low.

So everybody in medical tourism should devote more effort and resources to building a strong brand trust. Medical providers are able to generate loyalty among customers; this loyalty is directly beneficial, in terms of both creating repeat purchases and positive word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth is important in medical tourism because key informants for medical tourism have a close relationship with the consumer. Word-of mouth and Internet reviews hugely impact which country and which hotel tourists go to, and medical tourism has not yet grasped the increased importance of peer review compared to traditional advertising.

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