WORD-OF-MOUTH EFFECT ON CHOOSING A DOCTOR: RECEIVER PERSPECTIVES

• Main Authors: Yen-jen Lee, 李彥楨
• Other Authors: Tom M. Y. Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/4672wd

碩士 === 國立臺灣科技大學 === 管理學院MBA === 99 === Word-of-mouth marketing is getting more and more popular recently both in academy and in practice. However, few researchers study word-of-mouth processes in medical service, and, of course, no medicine provider put word-of-mouth marketing into practice. In 21st century, more and more people see medical services as a promising industry due to global aging population and high biotechnology development. Hence, understanding word-of-mouth process among patients in medical services could be interesting and useful. This study would find out word-of-mouth effects on patients when choosing doctors, understand how patients look for doctor information and which information source is important to them, and reveal what patients care about their doctors. As a pioneer, this study would like to induce medical word-of-moth researches in Taiwan and hope to improve word-of-mouth marketing in medical services. We designed a questionnaire based on how patients choosing doctors, including questions regarding information search, importance of different information sources and medical service decision, and respondents’ demographics. We released 235 questionnaires within a week to internal medicine department of Taipei Medical University Hospital. More than half of the respondents see doctors due to others’ recommendations（referral of family, friends and professionals）. Women are more likely to seek word-of-mouth information than men; and respondents who think choosing doctors is important tend to seek word-of-mouth information. Further, patients focus on “doctor’s behavior”, “doctor’s skills”, and “doctor’s ethic”.