Online narratives about medical tourism in Malaysia and Thailand: a qualitative content analysis

This study explored the written online narratives about medical tourism in Malaysia and Thailand using qualitative content analysis. The Google search engine was used for narrative search. Multiple search terms including medical, health, wellness tourism; treatment abroad; medical or health travel;...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of travel & tourism marketing Vol. 34; no. 6; pp. 821 - 832
Main Authors Abd Mutalib, Nur Syafiqah, Soh, Yee Chang, Wong, Tin Wui, Yee, Siew Mei, Yang, Quan, Murugiah, Muthu Kumar, Ming, Long Chiau
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Binghamton Routledge 24.07.2017
Taylor & Francis LLC
Subjects
Content analysis
cost reduction
Health services management
health tourism
Medical tourism
Narratives
patient preference
plastic surgery
Thailand
Malaysia
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Summary:This study explored the written online narratives about medical tourism in Malaysia and Thailand using qualitative content analysis. The Google search engine was used for narrative search. Multiple search terms including medical, health, wellness tourism; treatment abroad; medical or health travel; treatment, surgery, or plastic surgery; dental treatment or braces were used to obtain related blog posts, discussions, and forums via a purposeful sampling method. A total of 43 online narratives were included in this study. Themes were then created after an iterative analysis of the selected online comments or posts. The push factors that act as motivators were: cost (100%), attractions (81%), availability of facilitators (62%), physician's background and expertise (58%), bandwagon effect (42%). The majority of the subjects (88%) stated that they were satisfied with the outcomes of their medical treatments received in Malaysia and Thailand.
ISSN:1054-8408
1540-7306
DOI:10.1080/10548408.2016.1250697