Original Research Article
Year: 2019 | Month: February | Volume: 9 | Issue: 2 | Pages: 173-179
Impact of Value Co-Creation on Medical Tourism: A Study on Multispecialty Hospitals of Kolkata
Prabal Chakraborty1, Prof. Moumita Poddar2
1Research Scholar in Management, JIS University, Kolkata-700 109, India.
2Prof (Dr) Moumita Poddar, Associate Professor, JIS University, Kolkata.
Corresponding Author: Prof. Moumita Poddar
ABSTRACT
In India, hospital sector is now witnessing leading destination for international patients and becoming highly competitive. Foreign patients are coming mainly from developing and underdeveloped economies because of technological advancement, improvement of quality service, international accreditation, skilled manpower and lower cost. The healthcare market in India is estimated to reach US$ 10.6 billion by 2019 @30% CAGR.(KPMG,2015)Oncology segment is highly contributing sector and it is increasing inflow of foreign exchange and reputation in the international market. Foreigners with complicated medical conditions come to India for treatment. West Bengal has a unique geographical advantage because countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar are adjacent to it. When people are travelling from one country to another country to get medical treatment in that country, this is known as medical tourism.
Our objective in this paper is to find out the roles of patients and their family members, physicians (oncologist mainly) in value co-creation wherein all participants are defined to gain value. We are also proposing certain strategies based on the value creation strategy for the medical tourism. Co-creation refers to the procedure by which both the consumers and producers collaborate or participate in creating value.(Prahalad & Ramaswamy,2004) As a part of the qualitative study, we have collected data from 40 respondents(patients and their family members) of different private hospitals.
The results of the qualitative study indicate that patients and patient parties can co-create value by themselves with the hospitals whereby all participants are accountable to gain benefits. Our paper contributes to the value co-creation pattern by
a) The roles of patients and their family members, in Brand value co-creation and
b) How Brand value co-creation affects medical tourism by developing a model
Key words: Medical Tourism, Co-creation, Qualitative