The Effect of Relational Benefits and Relationship Commitment on Purchase Intention in Dental Implant Industry

• Main Authors: Sheng-Yu Huang, 黃聖諭
• Other Authors: Tsuen-Ho Hsu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/78145932496293259168

碩士 === 國立高雄第一科技大學 === 國際管理碩士學位學程 === 98 === A person’s life process from birth to senescence is pretty inseparable from the medicine. With the economic growing and medical technology improving, people’s living standard and lifespan is also upgrading and this lead the population structure in many countries to entering the time of aging. From this, we know that related researches about medical devices industry will be the focus of global technology development. Because medical devices industry is more closed and the prior researches about medical devices industry are limited. This study finds that the most important impact factor is the interaction between sales representatives and dentists and the marketing strategy is depending on the “relationship marketing.” Therefore, this study takes the medical devices in dental implant as the probing point to apply relational benefits and relationship bonds in relationship marketing and being the theoretic fundament. Firstly, through in-depth interviewing 14 dental implant marketers and buyers, this study examines the relationship and behavior between dental implant marketers and buyers, and proposes eight propositions. According to the result of in-depth interview, this study develops the research framework and disseminates 300 questionnaires for dentists who have the experience of implanting in Kaohsiung area to further explores the relationship among dentists’ relational benefits, word-of-mouth and purchase intention via the mediating role of relationship commitment and moderation effect of perceived risk. The results are showed as follow. 1. From in-depth interview, it is found that four relational benefits can strengthen the relationship between dental implant buyers and marketers. However, in verification of hypotheses, except the confidence and special treatment benefits, social benefit and economic benefit have positive effects on relationship commitment,. Since that, although buyers know that confidence of product and service is important, in the real transaction, buyers are still back to the relationship and economic incentive. 2. Relationship commitment does not have direct positive effect on purchase intention but has indirect effect through word-of-mouth, so word-of-mouth is complete mediator between relationship commitment and purchase intention. Therefore, dental implant marketers should increase the access for buyers to delivery word-of-mouth and increase purchase intention. 3. Perceived risk cannot moderate the relationship from relationship commitment to purchase intention and word-of-mouth. From questionnaire, it can be founded that dentists are filled with confidence, so the moderation effect of perceived risk can’t be adequately reflected.