The exploration of consumers' behavior in choosing hospital by the application of neural network

  • Authors:

  • Wan-I Lee;Bih-Yaw Shih;Yi-Shun Chung

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Marketing and Distribution Management, National Kaohsiung First, University of Science and Technology, No. 2, JuoYue Road, Nantz District, Kaohsiung City 811, Taiwan, ROC;Department of Computer Science, National PingTung University of Education, No. 4-18, Ming-Shen Road, PingTung 900, Taiwan, ROC;Department of Computer Science, National PingTung University of Education, No. 4-18, Ming-Shen Road, PingTung 900, Taiwan, ROC

  • Venue:
  • Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

The economic in Taiwan has been dramatically improved in the last two decades. During this period, the national health insurance was first conducted in 1995 and plans of health insurance payment have been modified several times. Demands of high quality and service on medical care are brought up in consumers' mind. Nowadays, hospital operating environment is getting more and more competitive. Therefore, how to take the advantage of competitiveness is the urgent topic of gaining advantage of competitiveness. The research applied neural network to classify consumers' behavior in choosing hospitals. A quantitative research of questionnaire was first conducted to explore consumers' behavior in choosing hospitals in southern Taiwan. Factors of consumers' behavior were categorized into four types. Then, a back propagation neural network classification model was developed. The model demonstrates the usefulness of 85.1% classification rate in classifying consumers' styles. Finally, their marketing implications were discussed. Based on the results of the research, the evidence is enough to suggest that the neural network model is useful in identifying existing patterns of hospitals' consumers.