The Study of Word-of-Mouth Marketing: an Example of LASIK Surgery of the Universal Eye Center
Date Issued
2016
Date
2016
Author(s)
Liu, Chun-Chieh
Abstract
The Word-of-mouth marketing (WOM) has been considered one of the most effective methods for medical institution. The postoperative satisfactions through the patients’ WOM referrals are the vital methods in customer royalty marketing of the healthcare industry under the political advertising restrictions. According to the database analysis of University Eye Center, more than 70% LASIK surgery (laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis) customer information sources are introduced through friend and relatives. Therefore, University Eye Center developed a customer loyalty program which is through the incentive program in which customers that present a certain behavior are rewarded with valuable gifts. This is the aim of reinforcing that WOM referrals efficiency and behavior while patients who have higher satisfaction after surgery. This study analyzes how the potential factors influencing typical consumer decision process who accept LASIK surgery. Furthermore, the analysis factors also included the “WOM referrals of friend and relatives” as the principal consideration which how to affect the patient choice of medical institution with LASIK surgery; how to reinforce the effectivity of “WOM referrals of friend and relatives” in the medical institution marketing strategies for willingness to pay for clinical characteristics and surgical treatment. This investigation is divided into two parts, one use Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) comparative analysis methods to assess the important influent factors for typical consumer decision in LASIK vision correction surgery. The other use the questionnaire methods to assess the patients’ Attitudes and ideas for recommend the same medical institutions to other people while after surgery. In the results, there are two factors almost as important, they are ""The relative and friends recommended "" and "" The patients'' experience of pre-operative consultation and examina7tion process "", respectively. Therefore, it is worth to sustain attention for internal service quality management and the increase investment of marketing budgets in the enterprise, this result is also consistent with our general awareness. In addition, as the result also shows that the main spread LASIK surgery of WOM loyalty consumer group was youth-middle aged group, which especially feature as the followings: the 31 to 40 years old female, college graduate, and annual income 510,000 ~ 800,000 NT$ for the job in business service industry.
Subjects
Word-of-mouth marketing
LASIK surgery (laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis)
Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)
customer loyalty
referrals of friend and relatives
Type
thesis