Development of medical tourism marketing strategies in Iran

Abstract

Introduction: Medical tourism has grown significantly in the past decade. It is estimated that the market value of medical tourism will reach 3 trillion dollars in 2025. Medical service providers rely on competitive advantages to enter this market. That is why in recent studies, marketing and management of medical tourism has been considered. Objective: This study aimed to determine Iran's marketing strategies in medical tourism among West Asian countries tourists using the STP model. Methodology: This study is a multi-method study in which, in addition to sequential quantitative and qualitative methods, a systematic review was conducted to of determine segmentation variables of the medical tourism market. In the first step, through a systematic review, the segmentation criteria that used in the health market around the world were extracted, then the segmentation criteria for Iran’s medical tourism market were determined. In the second step, the medical tourism market was segmented based on the determined variable (customer preferences) and then extracted segments was profiled. In the third step, the market attractiveness criteria were extracted through a narrative review, and then attractiveness of each sector was determined by experts in the field of health and tourism. In the next step, the capabilities and compatibility of Iran with the market segments were determined through literature review and semi-structured interviews with tourism and health tourism experts. Content analysis and framework analysis methods were conducted in litreture review and semi-structured interviews relatively. The compatibilities of Iran were provided to the experts in the form of a questionnaire, the degree of compatibility of Iran with each of the market segments was determined. Then by drawing the attractiveness-compatibility matrix for the market segments, the segments that were more attractive and compatible in this matrix were selected as the target segment. In the fifth step, Iran's performance in each of the attributes of medical tourism in the target markets was determined based on the questionnaire that was used in the first objective, and the performance of Iran's competitors was also extracted using the medical tourism index, and based on this, a value map of the target customers was drawn. In the sixth step, based on two of the most important attributes, a perceptual map of Iran's position in the market was drawn, and Iran's positioning strategies were determined by forming a focused group discussion, and these strategies were finalized through the Delphi method. Findings: Based on the results of the review study, value-based variables were identified proper for market segmentation. After segmentation; Five segments were extracted and based on the importance of attributes called: health seekers, health and destination seekers, tourism seekers, infrastructure seekers and perfectionism. In all five segments, the health attributes were of the highest importance. Perfectionism was the biggest segment in which all attributes were of high importance. In the third step, the market attractiveness criteria were identified in 5 main categories and 15 sub- categories. Based on attractiveness criteria, idealists and infrastructure seekers were most attractive segments. In terms of compatibility, Iran was more compatible with perfectionisms and health and destination seekers, and in the attractiveness-compatibility matrix, perfectionisms and health and destination seekers had a more suitable position and were selected as Iran's target segments. Iran's performance in the customer value map showed that Iran's value propositions for target customers should be in the health and the destination attributes. Skilled treatment team and using the high medical technologies were the most important attributes of medical tourism services for medical tourists, and therefore Iran's positioning will be defined based on the proposed values in these two features. Iran's value proposition strategies were categorized into two categories:1. destination and tourism 2. medical services, improving the quality of hotel services in hospitals, accelerating access to medical services, employing people fluent in the language, providing online medical services, facilitating patient access to information and fair prices were the strategies of Iran's proposed value for medical tourists. Conclusion: Iran should focus on providing value in the health and destination attributes in order to provide services to the segments of health and destination seekers and perfectionisms as target segments. Iran's strategy to propose value to customers should be based on strengthening the product's performance in these two attributes and adding new features to the product in tourism. Keywords: medical tourism, marketing, segmentation, targeting, positioning, customer value, service characteristics.