Word-of-mouth effect on purchasing a health care service: receiver perspectives

Autor: Min-Hong Li, 李旻鴻
Rok vydání: 2012
Druh dokumentu: 學位論文 ; thesis
Popis: 100
Although there are many studies about word of mouth in recent years, only few literatures review papers about WOM in health care service industry. This paper investigates the patients’ information searching behavior before making medical decisions and hopes to understand what kind of role do WOM play when patients making medical decisions. This paper also investigates the importance of medical decision-making for patients and what the important decision-making factors are. The research result can be concluded as blow: 1. More than 60% of patients rely on word-of-mouth when making medical decisions. 2. Facility is the most important factor that influencing consumer to choosing hospital, it means that hospital should purchase newly medical facilities and equipments regularly. 3. Patients who are actively searching information pay more attention on invisible factors, such as the reputation, the service or the prestige of hospital. 4. We found that patients who are actively searching information have different characteristics, for example males are actively seeking information on hospitals, and females are actively seeking information on doctors. 5. Our finding suggests that hospital should provide more information on the internet that patients care about but hard to obtain it.
Databáze: Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations