Abstract

The cutthroat competition of the market for the medical services caused changes and developments of hospital management from the traditional provider-oriented management to a consumer-oriented management toward the customer. And the popularization of on-line community through the growth and spread of internet technology is developed into an important exploration activity to provide various medical information to patient(or customer) who wishes a high-quality medical services. This is an on-line Word-of-Mouth(WOM). It is a kind of information exploration that is performed by customers before choosing the hospital with off-line word-of-mouth. In this study, we develop our research model to verify the causal relationships among on/off-line WOM, key determinants of hospital choice and the customer's will to make use of the hospitals, and total effect of these variables. We adopt a component-based PSL method for an empirical analysis of the patients experienced dermatology or obstetrics gynecology. Finally, we understand the characteristics of the various medical services and draw new and significant strategic previews.

Keywords

• word-of-mouth;
• WOM activity;
• medical services;
• determinants of hospital choice;
• medical marketing