TITLE:
The Role of Medical Word-of-Mouth on Sport Therapists: A Patient Psychological Perspectives
AUTHORS:
Fangyi Liu, Ming-Yu Chou, Yung-Lun Liu, Hong-Zhou Chen
KEYWORDS:
Medical Word-of-Mouth; Sport Therapist; Patient Psychology
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Medical Psychology,
Vol.2 No.4B,
October
21,
2013
ABSTRACT:
In 21st century, more and more people see medical
services of sport therapists as a promising industry due to global aging
population and high biotechnology development. Hence, understanding medical
word-of-mouth (WOM) process among patients in medical services of sport
therapists could be interesting and useful. This study would find out the role
of WOM on patients psychology when choosing the sport therapists, understand
how patients look for sport therapists’ information and which information
source is important to them. As a pioneer, this study would like to improve
medical WOM marketing of sport therapists. The authors designed a questionnaire
based on how patients choosing sport therapists, including questions search
importance of different information sources of sport therapists with medical
service decision, and respondents’ psychological demographics. We released 253
questionnaires of judo therapy clinics inTaiwan. More than half of the
respondents see sport therapists due to others’ recommendations (referral of
family, friends and professionals）. Women are more likely to seek medical word-of-mouth information
than men; and respondents who think choosing sport therapists are important
tend to seek medical word-of-mouth information. Further, patients focus on
“therapist’s behavior”, “therapist’s skills”, and “therapist’s ethic”.
