The word-of-mouth effects on the intention of Chinese customers to select an international medical tourism destination

Among the numerous results of this study, the most important of which is support for the general proposition by Bansal and Voyer (2000), Brown and Reingen (1987), Gelb and Johnson (1995), that WOM is a crucial moderator in the judgment of medical tourism decision process. Such moderating effects of WOM extremely reflect on the characteristics such as tie strength, credibility, and vividness. And in terms of illness severity, some specific feature effects of WOM are significant different. Therefore, medical destination managers and practitioners can use the findings of this study to develop their implications in the following ways. In the decision process of medical tourism, first, WOM can be utilized as an important moderator to change customers’ decision. This result suggests that health facility managers can use WOM as the promotional tool to attract more potential Chinese medical customers for industry development. Particularly, for medical marketers, an effort to initiate a WOM message or recommendation source and increase its effectiveness, an attempt should be made to focus on the characteristics of WOM such as tie strength, credibility, and vividness explicitly in different disease patterns.