CONSUMER BEHAVIOR IN THE RUSSIAN MARKET OF OUTBOUND MEDICAL TOURISM
This paper reviews the behavior of medical tourists as an interdisciplinary object of study (evidence from Moscow region). We first examine the global medical tourism market, offering the classification of medical tourism trips from the perspective of consumer needs. We reveal the drivers for medical tourism development in emerging economies (drawing on India’s experience). We construct a conceptual model of overall satisfaction of medical tourists as consumers of combined tourist and medical services. In partnership with Moscow medical tourist agencies we conducted an empirical study to identify the factors of consumer behavior of outbound medical tourists. The analysis makes it possible to substantiate the relevance of the proposed model, as well as to identify a number of distinctive features of the medical tourism segment based on the identified features of Russian medical tourists’ behavior. We conclude with the implications to promote medical tourist destinations for Russia’s medical tourists and to form a tourism product that fully meets their needs.