• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.18-36
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• 2024

This study delved into the complex nature of medical services as experience goods and trust services, investigating the profound impact of online word-of-mouth on medical consumers' decisions to visit hospitals. Considering the restrictive legal framework for medical advertising, consumers are increasingly dependent on unrestricted sources of information like online reviews. This research aimed to provide empirical evidence for the significant role online word-of-mouth plays in hospital selection. Utilizing data from Naver reviews, hospital choice factors were classified based on the Kano model, revealing the subtle yet significant influence that word-of-mouth has on consumers' hospital visit intentions beyond merely positive or negative messages. In particular, the study provided insights into how the categorized positive and negative information, along with the presence or absence of emotional expression, affects the efficacy of word-of-mouth. The experiment targeted medical consumers aged over 20 and, through analysis using the SPSS statistical program, yielded important findings. The direction of online word-of-mouth, the presence of emotional expression, and the interaction of Kano attributes all created significant differences in hospital visit intentions. Notably, emotional expression included in negative word-of-mouth concerning one-dimensional attributes markedly decreased visit intentions, whereas the absence of emotional expression in attractive attributes actually enhanced reliability and increased visit intentions. These findings offer critical implications for redefining strategies in medical marketing and online review management. The discoveries of this study underscore the importance of active engagement and strategic management of online reviews by medical service providers, urging careful consideration of the various elements of online word-of-mouth that influence medical consumers' hospital visit intentions.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.217-234
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• 1997

This study attempts to analyze some determinants of consumers' medical service quality and their complaining behavior. The results can be summerized as follows: 1. The determinants of consumers' perceived medical service quality could be categorized as five factors; i.e. nursery, hospital environment, medical doctors, other staffs service fee. Among them nursery sector consists of 32% variance. 2. According to the discriminant analysis, those determinants are of great value to distinguish between satisfied/unsatisfied group. The hit ratio was 85.4% which is relatively high score. 3. The type of complaining behavior could be grouped into no action, private and public complaining behavior. Most of respondents belonged to no action group and a few showed private complaining behavior. Any respondents who were willing to show public complaining behavior could not be found out. 4. These variables which influence complaining behavior were preconception toward hospital, barrier to complaining process and expected complaining behavior. Among them the first one was most influential variable. 5. In order to distinguish between complaining/non complaining behavior group, discriminant analysis was done. The result showed the above three variables had a significantly discriminatory power, the hit ratio reaching above 70%. In summary, we can see that consumers' evaluation on the whole medical service depends on the external factor such as staffs' attitude or hospital facilities due to the lack of their ability to evaluate highly specialized service like doctor's treatment.

• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.43-57
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• 2022

Objective : This study aims to understand the consumer's needs for Korean medicine medical service using online review analysis of medical consumers. Methods : We analyzed the purpose and satisfaction factors of medical service use using LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) topic modeling. The data used in the study was 120,727 screened reviews written by medical consumers registered on Naver. The analyzed results were compared with the "2020 Korean Medicine Utilization Survey". Results : From 2018 to 2021, the five most frequently used terms were "kindness", "treatment", "doctor", "Korean medicine", and "acupuncture". The main purpose of visiting Korean medicine medical clinic and hospital was to treat "traffic accidents" in 2018, "waist(back) pain" in 2019, "musculoskeletal pain" in 2020 & 2021. Based on the rating, reviewers were satisfied with "explanation of treatment" and "treatment attitude", and dissatisfied with "accessibility to the institution". Conclusion : We concluded that the main purpose of use of Korean medicine institution was to treat musculoskeletal disorders. Based on the results of this study, it is expected that it will be used to improve Korean medicine medical service in the future.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.25-44
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• 2023

Receiving medical services abroad is an event that involves a high level of risk and stress for most people. This study proposes and empirically examines perceived control as a factor that has a potential to reduce the stress associated with overseas medical experience and enhance satisfaction with it. Based on the research findings in environmental psychology, one's perceived control was divided into cognitive control, behavior control, and decision control. A research model and a set of hypotheses were constructed to investigate the effect of each control on satisfaction and word-of-mouth communications among consumers who had overseas medical service experiences. The data collection was conducted through an online survey of 220 Chinese consumers who had visited Korea as plastic medicine tourists. Satisfaction with their service experience was significantly affected by both behavioral control and decisional control, but not by cognitive control. Thus, Chinese medical tourists prefer to maintain the belief that they are in charge of major decisions associated with the medical procedure, and that the results of the medical procedure will have personally desirable consequences. In addition, satisfaction experienced by Chinese consumers with overseas medical services had a significant impact on their word-of-mouth activities. Based on the research results, a set of academic and practical implications were derived.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.425-437
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• 2005

Purpose: The purposes of this study were to compare the nursing service quality, gap, overall nursing service satisfaction, overall medical service satisfaction and intent to revisit the hospital perceived by consumers and providers. Methods: Data were collected with self-administered questionnaire and analyzed using frequency, %, mean, standard deviation, t-test, Pearson correlation coefficient, and multiple regression analysis. Result: Nursing service gap perceived by consumers was smaller than that of providers. Consumer's overall satisfaction with nursing and medical service was higher than that of nurses. In consumers, nursing service satisfaction alone accounted for 62.9% of the variance in their intent to revisit the hospital, while explained 3% of the variance in providers. Conclusion: There are definitely perception gap between consumers and providers. Therefore nursing and hospital managers must recognize it, and carry out the internal marketing strategies for nurses.

• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.1-23
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• 1999

The purpose of this paper is to survey the current status of service utilization in oriental medicine, to identify the determinants of consumers' decision in the service utilization, and then suggest policy implications for promoting the consumers' utilization. A multiple regression model was adopted to analyze the factors that influence consumer's decision in purchasing the oriental medical services. Data used in this research relied on National Survey Data conducted by Korea Institute of Health and Social Affairs, and sampling survey. The results could be summarized as follows.: 1. the number of visits to oriental medical institutions has shown an overall increase during the last decade since the inception of health insurance for oriental medical services. It still, however, revealed a relatively iow figure to western medical services. 2. the main factors, after controlling demographic variables, that determine consumers' selection between oriental medical services and western medical services are considered to be price, belief in effectiveness of services, waiting time for service. Implications for policy recommendation include 1. to reduce a barrier to service utilization by discounting dramatically the price of herb medicine, which is believed to be crucial in expanding market share, 2. to encourage consumer's belief in clinical effectiveness through a specialization in competitive services compared with wertern medicine, 3. to keep the affirmative image among consumers alive through an active participation of oriental medical doctors in community activities, 4 to change the health care system in favor of oriental medicine in the long run.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.345-362
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• 2010

It is necessary to develop new competitive products under the world economic downturn. The medical tourism industry a good example and it has grown rapidly for last couple of years. This paper aims to investigate socio-demographic proxies of inbound medical tourists in Korea. In particular, the medical tourist behaviors are modeled by considering the factors such as acquisition process of medical tourism information, service level of medical tourism industry and the choice attributes. The results of this study are summarized that: 1) Moot inbound medical tourists are over 40-years old with professional occupation accompanied with families; 2) The information resources are mainly acquired from travel agents and WOM(Word of Mouth) such as friends and relatives; 3) Current problems are lack of various promotion channels and the competitiveness of medical coots; 4) The inbound medical tourists are not homogeneous but vary in different segments. The study suggests that various marketing strategies should be implemented for target market segments to promote Korea as a medical tourism hub.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.35-61
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• 2010

The Internet marketing of hospital is being considered as a strategic requirement that can satisfy the customers. Therefore, it is very important to understand the effects of the medical information on the Internet on the actual consumers. In this study, the paths through which the attitude and satisfaction of the medical information consumers that visit hospital web site are formed for the medical information through the quality of the medical information on the Internet and usability of hospital web site were examined respectively according to the medical examination and treatment subjects that respectively deal with medical acts and cosmetic acts through light metabolism recovery. The usability of hospital web site, rather than medical information quality, had positive effects on the attitudes toward the medical information distributed in the corresponding web site and the satisfaction of use of hospital web site in the case of visitors of the hospital web site for the medical examination and treatment subjects of essential medical examination and treatment and emergency medical treatment, and, on the other hand, the result of analyzing the path of the medical examination and treatment subjects of cosmetics and functional improvement revealed that the medical information quality had positive effects on the medical information attitudes and the usage satisfaction of hospital web site. Accordingly, the attitudes toward the medical information distributed through the web site by the visitors of hospital web site is formed from the quality of medical information and web site usability, and, ultimately, they become generally satisfied with the hospital web site. Such process is revealed different1y according to the medical examination and treatment subjects for which consumers desire to obtain information.

• Journal of Korean Ophthalmic Optics Society
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.15-23
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• 2015

Purpose: This study was investigated consumers' and optometrists' perception about spectacle frame in Busan and Ulsan to find on the right progress direction for conversion of spectacle frame into medical devices. Methods: 137 consumers surveyed in Busan and Ulsan and 100 optometrist surveyed in 'Busan continuing education of optometrist' filled in a questionnaire, then we compared and analyzed the results. Results: The 79% (108 people) of consumers and 94% (94 people) of optometrists agreed to conversion into medical devices of spectacle frame. The reason was shown that the consumer expected to improve the optometrist reliability and the optometrist expected to improve the optometrist professionalism. While, the 21% (29 people) consumer and 6% (6 people) optometrist opposed to conversion of spectacle frame into medical devices. The reason was revealed that the consumers were concerned about increase of medical insurance cost and the optometrists were concerned about that the spectacle frames can also be sold by medical device stores, not only by optical shops. Conclusions: The result of the survey was shown that the most of consumers and optometrists in Busan and Ulsan agreed on perception toward a conversion of spectacle frame into medical devices. But, we are considered that consumers' and optometrists' active attention and support are needed, with sequential implementation reflecting the concerns for this.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.141-178
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• 2012

Korea's medical law prohibited medical advertisements in principle and permitted them on an exceptional cases. However, the decision of the Constitutional Court of 20005. 10. 27. 20003 Heonga 3, it was changed to a negative system which allows advertisements in principle and restricted only exceptionally. Dramatic increase of medical advertisements was made after that and many argued more deregulation because there was actually heavy regulations. In particular, there is almost no actual regulation on the article type advertisement due to the reason of protection of the freedom of press, media and occupation. However, there may be an unjust result if a specific article or specialists' opinion is made using a newspaper, broadcasting or magazine as a form of article type advertisement to specific medical specialists or medical institution or medical treatment method that falsifies consumers or makes consumers confused by unjust medical expectations or reliability, that also deteriorates just competition and that causes the misrecognition of consumers. In fact, there were actual damages of article type advertisements on the eye whitening surgery not long after the transfer to a negative system of medical advertisements. Victims raised a medical proceeding against the doctor who carried out the surgery, but there is actually no systematic warranty except for the indemnity request. Thus, this case demonstrated a vulnerable result of a negative system. As such, it is problematic that there is no proper regulations defined in the current law and regulations because of the reason of the protection of the freedom of press, publication and occupation despite damages of such article type advertisements. Accordingly, it is urgent to apply the current prevention regulations on the article type advertisements strictly, and to set up specific regulations.