Qualitative explorations into customer based brand equity (CBBE) for medical tourism in India

Abstract

The focus of our research is Customer Based Brand Equity (CBBE) in Indian medical tourism which has gained wider attention world-wide. To be able to operationalize CBBE (brand equity) for medical tourism scale development, we generated items for such a scale through content analysis. The research questions for this study were (a) What are the dimensions for a brand equity scale for medical tourism considering social, economic, and market influences? (b) How is culture along with an economic indicator such as infrastructure/superstructure relevant in the context of CBBE for medical tourism? and (c) To what extent does the content analysis of interviews based on questionnaires from literature reviews support the variable? The respondents were contacted from two large East Indian Hospitals with continuous visits by heterogeneous foreign patients. Content analysis was used to evaluate the responses using the framework for coding as given by Corbin and Strauss (2008). This paper explores the reasons as to why the patients from western countries and the Middle East prefer other destinations as compared to India for medical tourism.