Published Paper Details:

This article aims at understanding the loyalty of customers who travel across borders for medical treatments by exploring various factors of customer relationship management. Medical tourism has become an influential industry in last few years and contributes heavily in any corporate hospital's revenues, however it is not short of any challenges though, thus through this article, relationship between CRM, and customer loyalty was identified. The study is based on Mixed Methods (qualitative and quantitative) wherein the quantitative study was done via cross-sectional analytic study design, wherein primary data was collected through a structured questionnaire on a 5-point Likert scale from 419 respondents and processed through descriptive statistics and multiple regression technique using SPSS. The qualitative study involved a focus group discussion between the employees working across several divisions of International Patients Services of the hospitals under the sampling frame chosen for a quantitative study. 'Trust' as a driver of CRM was found to be the most significant contributors of loyalty, thus strategies around this element shall guide the corporate hospitals in establishing India for its competitive advantage and a hub for medical tourism. Since there have been very limited studies of this kind that have been undertaken concerning the Indian hospitals, this study is one of its kind which shall highlight the important factors as perceived by international patients and employees of the hospitals and thus can further be utilized by the corporate hospitals to strategies their business processes to make the most out of this emerging area of medical tourism.