The role of social media marketing and service quality in medical tourism, a research on health institutions and patients

The aims of this study are to obtain information on the use of social media by patients, hospitals and health institutions in medical tourism, to reveal the ways in which patients share their satisfaction before and after treatment on social media and their evaluations of the quality of the health services they receive. In this context, two studies were conducted: quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative study included international patients who applied to private hospitals or private health institutions in Istanbul, while the qualitative study included private health institution managers, agency managers and physicians. 296 patients participated in the quantitative study and data were collected using the survey method; the collected data were analyzed using SPSS 21 and Lisrel 12 softwares and the data collected in the qualitative study were analyzed using MAXQDA-2020 software. The research findings show that social media plays an important role in hospital/physician preferences, and it was observed that the average satisfaction share of patients after receiving the service was higher than the average dissatisfaction share. According to the information obtained from the data collected from the managers who contributed to the qualitative study, it was revealed that social media marketing is the most important advertising and promotion tool in medical tourism and that the most important factor in ensuring patient continuity is quality service and patient satisfaction. According to the qualitative and quantitative research results, it is important for private health institutions to expand their social media content and create marketing strategies for the target market in order to provide competitive advantage. It has also been revealed that service quality and satisfaction play an important role in patient continuity and in patients' recommendation of health institutions.