International Journal of Nonlinear Analysis and Applications

The importance of the effect of mixed elements of marketing in the development of medical tourism in Gilan province

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Department of Management, Rasht Branch, Islamic Azad University, Rasht, Iran

Abstract

The presence of expert and skilled doctors and Iran's abundant natural attractions, each of them alone, can attract many tourists. Previous studies have mainly focused on the attraction of health tourists, the segmentation of the medical tourism market, the challenges and solutions for the development of medical tourism, and the design of medical and health tourism models in government or selected hospitals in the country, as well as the impact of some marketing components in medical tourism. According to the capacities of Gilan province, the need to pay attention to market segmentation in medical tourism in a provincial way is more evident than before, and it is necessary to determine the marketing mix elements as well as the extent of its impact in the development of medical tourism in the province. Considering the complexities of the medical tourism market and the country's little experience, the lack of such an issue is very noticeable. Therefore, determining the impact of mixed marketing elements to promote medical tourism in the province to cover this theoretical and practical gap is an aspect of innovation and newness of the present research. The statistical population includes experts in the fields of management, executive and medical tourism, and using Cochran's formula, 36 questionnaires were distributed among the members of the statistical population. In this research, to analyze the fuzzy Delphi methods to screen and identify the effective factors in the mixed model of medical tourism marketing, the AHP method to determine the weights of the indicators that are effective in the mixed model of medical tourism marketing, and also the fuzzy ANP method to determine the optimal indicators in the conditions Uncertainty of information will be exploited. In order to solve the fuzzy ANP method and the multi-objective mathematical programming model, MATLAB software was used. The results show that the marketing mix index (A3) is the closest to the positive ideal answer and the most distant from the negative ideal answer, and the first priority among the effective factors in Gilan medical tourism in terms of the desired criteria is the medical tourism marketing mix.

Keywords

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International Journal of Nonlinear Analysis and Applications
Volume 16, Issue 12
December 2025
Pages 159-175
  • Receive Date: 02 December 2023
  • Revise Date: 25 December 2023
  • Accept Date: 31 December 2023