The Intersection of Marketing and Medical Tourism: A Tourism Management Perspective

Abstract

 To establish a prosperous career in the dental field, it is imperative for dental professionals to grasp both the theoretical and practical aspects of marketing strategies. The realm of social media presents significant potential for cost-effective dental service promotion, exerting a substantial influence on modern dental practices. This research endeavors to investigate the impact of marketing dental services, with a specific focus on the utilization of social media within the dental industry. A probability-based sampling method was employed to select three distinct dental clinics from a pool of five major cities across India. Among these, one clinic employed digital marketing for promotion, while the other two adhered to conventional marketing practices. After identifying the dental clinics, a cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the relationship between patient outcomes in digital marketing-based clinics compared to non-digital marketing-based clinics. The clinics were further evaluated and compared based on their patient outcomes over a six-month period. One-way ANOVA was employed to analyze the patient inflow across these three clinics, followed by post-hoc Turkish tests for result evaluation. The one-way ANOVA revealed that the clinic employing digital marketing exhibited the highest patient frequency. Clinically significant findings supported the efficacy of digital marketing in Clinic 1, establishing a correlation between digital marketing and improved patient outcomes within dental clinics. In conclusion, this study underscores the pivotal role of digital marketing in the dental services market, surpassing the effectiveness of conventional advertising strategies.