An investigation on the effectualness of word-of-mouth communication according to the demographic data of consumers in health services marketing

One of the most important issues in terms of human life is health. In this regard, health services have been developed by firstly states and then by developing private sector to maintain human life healthy and to treat the diseases. Since health services are a working field needing a special specialty, individuals have so less knowledge about health and health services issues. Thus, individuals benefit from lots of information sources in order to gather information about health services and to make purchasing decision. One of these sources is word-of-mouth communication. In this respect, individuals gather some positive or negative information from others who have previous experiences about healthcare organizations providing health services through word-of-mouth communication. Within this scope, the purpose of this research was determined as determining the role of word-of-mouth communication on consumer purchasing decision in health services marketing. The study was conducted with 290 participants in Istanbul Kartal Dragos Seaside Site and Istanbul Süreyyapaşa Health Social Security Centre. In terms of analyzing the data gathered via survey form, SPSS-22 statistics program was used. As the result of factor analysis for word-of-mouth scale, four factors were determined. After testing 16 main hypothesis via Independent Sample T Test and ANOVA Test analysis, 7 hypothesis were accepted and 9 of them were rejected. In terms of the factor of effect degree of word-of mouth communication and specialty level of the individual as information source, there were determined statistically significant differences for gender and education level variables, while there was not determined any significant difference for age group and marital status variables. In terms of the factor of closeness degree with the individual as information source, there were determined statistically significant differences for gender and education level variables, whereas there were not determined any significant differences for age group and marital status variables. In terms of the factor of individual's own specialty level about service, there were not determined any significant differences for gender, age group, education level and marital status variables. In terms of the factor of perceived risk level, there was determined statistically significant difference for only education level variable, while there were not determined any significant differences for gender, education level and marital status variables. To sum up, the result that word-of-mouth communication has an important role in health services marketing and purchasing decision process for health services in general was reached. Keywords: Health, Health Services, Health Services Marketing, Word-of-Mouth Communication, Consumer Purchasing Decision