News

See all

DBA defense: A model of entrepreneurial marketing in Iran’s health tourism

22-06-2022

On 21 June 2022, Mr. Seyed Mohammad Mahdi Ghorashi successfully defended his DBA thesis titled: "A model of entrepreneurial marketing in Iran’s health tourism".

About Dr. Seyed Mohammad Mahdi Ghorashi's research
Health tourism is a type of niche tourism that has become progressively famous as of late and has caught the consideration of business analysts, medical service suppliers, tourism and hotel industry around the world. Health tourism is the medical treatment that patients look for across international boundaries. Patients look for health tourism for different motives. The host nations think about health tourism as a source of financial benefits.

Social Media are changing the health tourism from its customary form into a data-based form. Social media affect the health tourism, particularly in the manner that tourists acquire and utilize the health tourism data. Social media have impacted the health tourism atmosphere by transforming the way of behaving of both health tourists and business sections into new one. While social media and the Internet was beginning to be famous between the health tourists, the health tourism industry transformed into a data-based industry, since the social media permit health tourists to compete and cooperate in creating, utilizing and dispensing travel data via the Internet.

Entrepreneurial marketing is a function and scope of research that has improved quickly throughout recent thirty years. It leverages the new rationale of social media and can innovatively improve costumer correspondence in the arising digital economy. In social media in which people self-choice into networks related to unambiguous subjects, like amusement and sport’s celebrities, propose an alluring marketing choice for developing quantities of companies. Influencers’ endorsement is one of the ancient marketing strategies for improving the image of the brand and uplifting purchase aims.

Social media proposes a hordes of chances for entrepreneurial marketing strategies that influence the force of networks, particularly when they are joined with customary methodologies like celebrities’ endorsement. The range, frequency, and rate of correspondence via social media propose the best influence for the motives of entrepreneurial marketing. Notwithstanding, the fast pace of progress might undermine the impacts of funding in entrepreneurial marketing on social media and they may be lasting only a short time. Utilizing Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), the celebrity endorser credibility on innovativeness for purchase aims was tested. This relationship is mediated by image of the brand and moderated by the brand distinction. This research is the first one to investigate the effects of entrepreneurial marketing on social media in context of health tourism in Iran. The contributions and implications of the findings is presented as they affect the research and the practice.

Back to overview