Innovation in medical tourism service marketing : a case of India

The aim of this paper is to critically examine the latest development of medical tourism as an innovation in India. The existing theories and concepts in medical tourism are reviewed and synthesised in order to lay down a foundation for marketing managers to deploy marketing mix strategies to deliver values to the medical tourists. Secondary research method is adapted to gather relevant literature. This chapter not only provides a background introduction to the growing importance of medical tourism industry to the Indian economy, but also makes major contributions: firstly, that global healthcare service marketing is quite different from marketing of other services and goods. Secondly, it proposes to examine the application of 8Ps of tourism marketing-mix along with other 6Ps such as: personalisation of healthcare, publication for patient, patient packaging, patient education, patient privacy and patient medical and cultural sensitivities for effective marketing of the popular Indian wellness and medical tourism destinations, super-speciality hospitals and complex diagnostic tests and surgeries to the world.