Proceedings of The International Conference on Social Sciences in the 21st Century
Year: 2019
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/ics21.2019.07.376
Uses of Thai Dental Clinics/centers Websites for Marketing Communication in Dental Tourism: Content Analysis
Papon Chongthanavanit and Jantima Kheokao
ABSTRACT:
Dental clinics and dental centers in hospitals followed medical hub policy of Thailand. They tried to use marketing communication channels especially in online including website and social media for providing information and promoting destinations’ dental facilities, their staffs, dentist expertise, services, treatments and quality of equipment to foreign people. This study examines websites of Thai dental clinics/centers to promote their services. Content analysis was used to analyze data 38 items in 5 dimensions: clinic/center/hospital information and facilities, admission and dental services, interactive online services, external activities, and technical items from 35 active websites. The findings as follows.
1. Dental Centers/clinics performed well in providing content that highlights core business: dental facilities, equipment and staffs
2. Both dental centers/clinics have the same way of using communication strategy by using photo/video to tour facilities and provide patient’s testimonial to convince other patients
3. In term of information dental centers/clinics provided lack of financial issues.
4. Blurred information between conventional dental services and other services
5. Few dental centers/clinics support non-dental services concerns such as consultation online, Booking process, ground transport, linguistic interpretation and post-discharge
Keywords: Thai Dental tourism, Websites, Marketing Communication.