Surrogate-mediated Consumer Purchasing Decision of Enteral Feeding

• Main Authors: Yun-yu Hu, 胡蘊玉
• Other Authors: Tom M. Y. Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/40451505586603024492

碩士 === 國立臺灣科技大學 === 管理研究所 === 100 === Enteral feeding is for a person who cannot swallow or digest food normally. It’s a liquid food that poured directly into the stomach or intestine through a tube. The choice of enteral feeding formula is not only natural food, there are also a lot of commercial formulas for long-term care institutions to chosen. In addition to general home use, commercial enteral feeding formula use a lot in hospitals and long-term care institutions. As the population ages, demand for long-term care continue to rise. Therefore, the number of long-term care institutions is increasing. It’s an implication that the market of enteral feeding is important. The purchaser of enteral feeding is usually family or long-term care institutions because patients are long-term bedridden. The purpose of this research is to investigate the factors of surrogate-mediate consumer purchasing decision in long-term care institutions. This paper also investigates who the key decision-maker among surrogate-mediated consumer is in long-term care institutions. Will head nurses or nutritionists suggest actively that changing tube feeding formula? In which situation surrogate-mediated consumers will change the tube feeding formula? This paper is qualitative research and using semi-structured in-depth interview to investigate the important concepts of this research needed. Finally, this paper aggregates and summarizes the data and using descriptive study to analyze different role (director, nutritionist, head nurse). The research result shows that every role (director, nutritionist, head nurse) has similar ideas that they all pay attention on the nutritional ingredient. And they also think that both price and quality are important effecting factors. The key decision-maker is director of long-term care institutions, but the suggestion of nutritionist is also significant. Nutritionist suggests actively that changing tube feeding formula, when the products have problems. However, the willingness of head nurses to make recommendation is lower. Only few literatures review papers about medical nutrition and surrogate-mediated consumers. For future research, this paper provides a lot of information.