The importance of marketing communication in medical tourism marketing

Country development is greatly influenced by tourism. The tourism industry is expanding and diversifying with each passing day. Health tourism is one of the most significant categories of tourism. The production and consumption of medical services on a global scale as well as the movement of patients internationally have existed throughout history. The international movement of patients has, nevertheless, grown as a result of globalization, which has accelerated with the development of information and communication technologies. Millions of people have traveled to other countries in recent years to receive health care that is higher in standard and less expensive than medical care in their own country. Because of this circumstance, the relevance of health tourism is growing daily among nations. But there are various kinds of health tourism such as thermal tourism, elderly and disabled health tourism, spas and wellness tourism, and medical tourism. The global medical tourism market reached 104,68 billion dollars in 2020, but Turkey's share was only 548,88 million USD. Marketing communication tools are considered to play an important role in increasing Turkey's share in this market. From this point of view, the aim of this study is to reveal which marketing communication mix is more effective in these preferences of tourists visiting Turkey within the scope of medical tourism. Moreover, it is assumed that the quality of services and customer satisfaction influence the behavioral intentions of medical tourists. In this context, another objective of the study is to find out whether customer satisfaction has a mediating effect on the relationship between perceived service quality and behavioral intentions. The scales linked with the research variables were adjusted to the study and the questionnaire form was created in accordance with the study's objectives. The data needed for the analysis of the study were obtained by personally interviewing 432 people from 53 different countries, who were selected by the convenience sampling method, one of the non-random sampling methods, among the tourists visiting Istanbul in the context of medical tourism. SPSS 20.0 and AMOS 24.0 package programs were used in the study to analyze the data. Descriptive statistics for the sample, confirmatory factor analysis, reliability and validity analyzes were performed in this process. Finally, hypotheses were tested and results were evaluated. The study revealed that advertising and traditional word-of-mouth marketing communication are the most efficient marketing communication techniques for getting medical tourists to choose Turkey. Additionally, it was observed that customer satisfaction acted as a mediator in the interaction between all aspects of perceived service quality and behavioral intentions. Based on the results obtained, the study was concluded with various proposals for researchers and companies operating in the field of medical tourism. Keywords: Medical Tourism, Marketing Communications, Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction, Behavioral Intentions