This report will outline the most relevant behavioral characteristics of medical tourism consumers who begin their search online and examine the ways they find, compare and evaluate product information. In this project we need to put ourselves in the shoes of a patient from USA who is searching for a hospital in India for his knee replacement surgery. She does not have any relative in India and hence the World Wide Web is his best bet. The reason for India being the choice is that s he has heard a lot about “Incredible India” and wants to spend a vacation here with her husband post her recovery as she is aware that India has a huge variety of tourist destinations. And most importantly the entire surgery (The all inclusive cost would include all expenses relating to Specialist Consultations, Investigations, Medicines, Gases and Consumables, Intensive Care and Nursing services during the 7 days stay in the hospital) is going to cost her almost 1/7 th of the amount she would have spent in his country. Add to it the vacation, and they would still spend around 1/4 th of the cost in US. Hence, the Problem Recognition has already been done. The objective of the project is to “think like a foreigner”; proceed with the information search as they wo uld do, evaluate the alternatives and take a decision. The purpose of this report is to translate these findings into a set of implementation activitie s on strategic and technological level. Execution of these recommendations will result in better conversion of visitors into customers and encourage customer loyalty and referrals. Majority of adults from the states tend to be active information seekers. A high level of technological confidence within this group tends to be an encouraging factor when it comes to product informati on research online. There are two main research topics: • Information Retrieval and Search Patterns • Perception of Product Information Online These two areas are mutually dependent and particularly important in a market where consumers have the power to choose the right product from a number of competing suppliers. Well-structured product information that cannot be found easily online is as much of a problem as is having easily accessible information that does not meet the consumer’s expectations. “Now, let me begin by christening my character as Angelina Brown. She stays at Columbus, Ohio. Her annual gross income is $66,200 and annual household income is $166,200. She wants a Total Knee Replacement Surgery done which she heard costs around $6,000 in India as compared to $40,000 there. She is 50 years old and a n avid traveler.”Information Retrieval and Search Patterns The first search stage started with a major search engine (Google, Live, and Yahoo) in its non-local version. Before clicking on a first satisfactory search result, Angelina mainly looked for the highest percentage match in the search result titles (blue text) where word proximity in the phrase played an important factor, following the search result description body (black text). Web address (green text) was largely ignored. In this case Angelina chose to search through google.com
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This report will outline the most relevant behavioral characteristics of medical tourism consumers who begin their
search online and examine the ways they find, compare and evaluate product information. In this project we need to
put ourselves in the shoes of a patient from USA who is searching for a hospital in India for his knee replacement
surgery. She does not have any relative in India and hence the World Wide Web is his best bet. The reason for India
being the choice is that she has heard a lot about “Incredible India” and wants to spend a vacation here with her
husband post her recovery as she is aware that India has a huge variety of tourist destinations. And most importantly
the entire surgery (The all inclusive cost would include all expenses relating to Specialist Consultations, Investigations,
Medicines, Gases and Consumables, Intensive Care and Nursing services during the 7 days stay in the hospital) is going
to cost her almost 1/7th of the amount she would have spent in his country. Add to it the vacation, and they would still
spend around 1/4th of the cost in US. Hence, the Problem Recognition has already been done. The objective of the
project is to “think like a foreigner”; proceed with the information search as they would do, evaluate the alternatives
and take a decision. The purpose of this report is to translate these findings into a set of implementation activities on
strategic and technological level. Execution of these recommendations will result in better conversion of visitors into
customers and encourage customer loyalty and referrals.
Majority of adults from the states tend to be active information seekers. A high level of technological confidence withinthis group tends to be an encouraging factor when it comes to product information research online.
There are two main research topics:
• Information Retrieval and Search Patterns
• Perception of Product Information Online
These two areas are mutually dependent and particularly important in a market where consumers have the power to
choose the right product from a number of competing suppliers. Well-structured product information that cannot be
found easily online is as much of a problem as is having easily accessible information that does not meet theconsumer’s expectations.
“Now, let me begin by christening my character as Angelina Brown. She stays at Columbus, Ohio. Her annual gross
income is $66,200 and annual household income is $166,200. She wants a Total Knee Replacement Surgery done which
she heard costs around $6,000 in India as compared to $40,000 there. She is 50 years old and an avid traveler.”
Information Retrieval and Search Patterns
The first search stage started with a major search engine (Google, Live, and Yahoo) in its non-local version. Before
clicking on a first satisfactory search result, Angelina mainly looked for the highest percentage match in the search
result titles (blue text) where word proximity in the phrase played an important factor, following the search resultdescription body (black text). Web address (green text) was largely ignored. In this case Angelina chose to search
How does a consumer (in this case Angelina) see and understand product information online?
When buying products and services online, consumers are facing two fundamental differences: removal of physical
presence and (as a compensation) abundance and versatility of product information. In other words, a physical product
has been replaced by product information. A few reviews would also be helpful.
One of the main characteristic which could be seen was the lack of patience. A majority of interviewed individuals
stated that they are willing to wait only up to five seconds for a page to load. Angelina opted for Fortis Hospitals as she
did not have to wait for an e-mail response and could interact with someone over the phone and find out the details
Consumers will appreciate businesses, which value for customer’s time by employing technology, tools, information
and customer service.
There is a contradiction in the way consumers think while viewing information online. They are not willing to read
extensive amounts of data. They prefer to ‘scan’ through volumes of information very briefly while looking for key
benefits. For this, they require moderate amounts of summarized information. At the other hand, consumers arealso not likely to buy anything online unless complete product information is available. Having to inquire about a
certain product due to lack of information available on the website delays the transaction, however most people are
willing to wait extra time for a human response to an online inquiry.
A website can traditionally be seen as a place of purchase, however, for consumers it is also a store, a brochure and a
sales person, and is expected to serve quickly and perform well. Survey results show that the quality of presentation
and information breakdown can affect consumer attitude towards the product and buying confidence. For example,
basic quality standards are necessary in order to create consumer trust (speed and structural integrity). Second most
prominent factor seems to be simplicity of the checkout process. People generally prefer not to fill out long registration
forms.
Consumers favor almost all timesaving tools such as:
• Pop-up descriptions
• Photo galleries
• Product summaries before full product information
• Product comparison
An interesting observation is that most interviewed consumers considered automated product suggestions eitherirrelevant or unnecessary, therefore most would not follow such leads An example of this would be Amazon’s
“Customers who bought this item also bought the following…” and eBay’s “Related products” section. Instead,
consumers choose to do their own independent research, compare their own findings and read other people’s