한국의 의료관광지 브랜드 이미지가 의료관광객이 지각하는 가치와 브랜드 인지도에 미치는 영향

Brand Image of Korea as a Medical Tourism Destination and Its Impact on Medical Tourists’ Perceived Value and Brand Awareness

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to analyze how Korea’s brand image and perceived value will affect the brand awareness of Korea as a medical tourism destination and identify the determinants of brand image as a medical tourism destination relative to tourists’ perceived value and brand awareness. Design/Methodology/Approach - This study collected data from 103 Chinese respondents visiting Korea. In order to verify the discriminative validity and convergent validity of each construct such as country image, Hallyu image, medical service image, perceived value and brand awareness, higher order confirmatory factor analysis of the measurement model and structural equation modeling were conducted. Findings - Key findings include the following. Country image and medical service image as a medical tourism destination are positively related to the perceived value of potential medical tourists. The highly perceived value has a positive strong impact on brand awareness. However, the Hallyu image does not have any effect on perceived value. Research Implications - Compared to the previous studies focusing on individual factors affecting brand image as a medical tourism destination, this study deals with three images (country image, Hallyu image, and medical service image) simultaneously. The existing research is limited to classifying types of perceived value according to the quality and attributes of products or services. Moreover, there is a lack of discussion on the influencing factors affecting perceived value.