Medical Tourism Destination Marketing in the Event of COVID-19 Outbreak through Neuromarketing Techniques: A Fuzzy DEMATEL Approach
Abstract
In the last decade, medical tourism has increased tremendously. After assessing the alarming levels of spread and severity, the World Health Organization declared the new coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak as a global pandemic. The COVID-19 outbreak has affected many of the major destinations and sources of medical tourism. Patients who have planned to travel abroad for affordable medical care are canceling or postponing trips due to this pandemic. During this pandemic, it is important to obtain new medical tourists through effective destination branding. Neuromarketing techniques and tools have been effective in studying the consumers’ behaviors, particularly in the decision-making process. It is found that neuromarketing tools can assist the decision-makers to accurately measure the consumers’ behaviors in relation to the conventional techniques. This paper investigates the role of neuromarketing techniques in the event of the COVID-19 outbreak for destination marketing. Accordingly, a decision-making model is developed for destination marketing in the event of the COVID-19 outbreak. The data is analyzed by a fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making model, Fuzzy Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL). The results showed that accuracy and quality of information are the most important factors in implementing neuromarketing techniques for medical tourism destination marketing in the event of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Keywords
References
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