The Effect of Social Marketing Strategy on Overseas Patient Satisfaction via Attitude in the Context of Medical Tourism in South Korea

The occurrence of COVID-19 has jeopardized many businesses and, as a result, healthcare service providers are seeking to establish an effective strategy to survive in the short term and prosper in the long term. Appling the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework to medical tourism settings in South Korea, the present study seeks to examine the effect of social media marketing (i.e., stimulus) on overseas patient satisfaction (i.e., response) via attitude (i.e., organism). Survey data from international patients, who received cosmetic service from clinics located in Busan, South Korea, were employed to examine our hypotheses. The findings suggest that social media marketing strategy impacts oversea patient attitude that overseas patient attitude affects satisfaction, and that social media marketing strategy impacts satisfaction only through attitude (i.e., full mediation effect is observed). Based on our hypothesis testing results, we provide theoretical and managerial implications, followed by limitations and future study directions.