Examining the organizational marketing effectiveness and promotional strategies of the medical tourism health service providers in Turkey and also examining the motivational behaviors and perceptions of the medical tourists

Traveling to other countries to get health service is not a new phenomenon. But the effects of globalization has led to the development of medical tourism as a new economy. Turkey, which is offering price advantage, touristic beauty and well equipped health institutions; is one of the choice for medical tourists who is seeking for medical treatment overseas. As long as the share of medical tourism industry grows in the worldwide economy, it causes the intense competitive environment. And to be noticed in this environment the effectiveness of marketing and promotional strategies is very important. For the countries and of course the health institutions, whose objective is to get share from this developing industry, it is a must to show efforts to develop quality standards for attracting new customers and increasing the loyalty of existing customers. The purpose of this study is to assess the organizational marketing effectiveness and promotional strategies in the medical tourism health service providers of Turkey and to examine the motivational behavior and perception of the medical tourists. Under this purpose data were collected by survey method and the field study was conducted on 175 private health institutions managers and 172 medical tourists over all the Turkey. For analysing the data in this study; exploratory factor analysis, variance analysis, correlation and regression methods were applied to the data with the complementery statistical tests. And the results of the analysis support the expectations for the hypothesis and research questions. Research results have indicated that; the private health institutions which is providing or aiming to provide medical tourism service in Turkey, evaluate their organizational marketing effectiveness very high. According to the results, there is a meaningful intentional relationship among each of the promotional strategies, perceptions of values, perceptions of service quality and; overall satisfaction, word of mouth and repeat buying behavior. Word of mouth communication is determined as a promotional strategy that has a maximum impact on the choice of medical tourists. eywords: Medical tourism, promotional strategies, organizational marketing effectiveness, motivational factors, service quality, Turkey medical tourism ındustry