The Research Of Obstetrics And Gynecology Market Segmentation Model Based On Customer Expectations

In the1960s, Service Marketing has rised in western countries, and with the development of services around the world, people have recognized that service will become the focus of business competition. Hospital is quite different from general manufacturing and service industry, which not only provides diagnosis, treatment and retail medicine to the patients, but also offers comprehensive follow-up "service products", such as hospitalization, nursing care. This study is based on the following backgrounds:(1) Obstetrics and Gynecology domestic macroeconomic environment has changed;(2) The era of the hospital market segments has come;(3) Market segmentation theory turns into new areas, a new and comprehensive service marketing concept has been introduced into all levels of domestic hospitals.How to subdivide the hospital market, and grasp the characteristics of each segment is the first and fundamental task of marketing services. The research of market segmentation variables in Western has gone through four stages: geographic variables, demographics and other external features; psychological variables of segmentation; behavior segmentation variables and lifestyle segmentation variables. A number ot scholars have broken through the traditional theory and brought forward some new segmentation variables, such as customer relationship, customer value, customer interests, and new market segmentation model based on these variables. In addition, many scholars pointed out that the competition among hospitals in the future depends on the grasp of patient expectations, who can predict the target market’s expectation, provide appropriate services, will be the hospital in a good situation in the competition. Further more the dynamic and systematic management of patient expectations is beneficial for hospitals to develop the ability to meet patient expectations continuously, rise the value patient purchased, and maintain more permanent relationship with the patients. So this article has following significant meanings:first it’s the deepening and expanding of the market segmentation theory;Second it’s a complement and application of customer expectation theory; At last it’s a basilic reference for hospitals to implement service marketing.The model in this article conduced a new way to divide hospital market by the hierachy of patient’s expectation, and compared with the traditional market segmentation, it is innovative, dynamic and holistic. Customer expectations—the segmentation variable represents the consumer’s innate personality, psychological and environmental behavior differences organically, and responses to the differences from the overall perspective of somatological system function. There are two model assumptions:(1)Patient’s expectation is affected by internal components and external drivers combinablly, the internal components include: expectations of hospital technical and facility, expectations of hospital services, expectations of hospital image, expectations of payment. External drivers include: the patient’s personal needs, past treatment experience, the hospital’s commitment, daily talk spreading, patient’s choices;(2) The patient’s expectations can be divided significantly into three levels, and from low to high they are basic expectations, price associated expectations, over satisfaction expectations, and then we could make use of patint’s expectation levels as the basis for obstetric and gynecological market segments.Research methods used in this article involves literature reviews, depth interviews and random sampling survey. According to the results of practical research and theoretical analysis, we obtained the following conclusions:(1) Patient’s expectations are influenced by two dimensions, nine variables as the model proposed;(2) Patient can be significantly divide into three groups according to their expectation levels;(3) The effect of nine variables to each patient groups are different respectively;(4) For patients of the same expectation level, the impact of certain variables are also significantly different;(5) According to the sample’s characteristics, obstetrics and gynecology patient groups with "high age, high education, high position, high income" correspond to "high expectations", while the "low age, low education, low-ranking, low-income" groups correspond to "low expectations", but this phenomenon is not exact and accurate.