Dental Health Tourism in the Covid-19 Pandemic Era: An Assessment from the Cross-Sectoral Cooperation Perspective

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the communicative actions, organizational strategies, and practices affecting the perceived value through the cross-sectoral cooperation of the dental health tourism market during the COVID-19 pandemic era. The research sub-aims are to find out how the dental health tourism market influences the value perceived by stakeholders from the cooperation environment and the level of crosssectoral interaction in terms of organizational strategy due to the COVID-19 pandemic's effect. The research's originality is to support the axiom that effective management of perceived value in the dental health tourism market is related to the mutual conformity and coexistence of stakeholders engaged in communicative actions. In this study, the dental health tourism market was chosen as the field of application since it is in a position that serves different customer groups. The materials used in the dental health tourism market not only affect the industrial sector with its production and marketing dimensions but also directly influences the dental health tourism sector as a sub-branch of the medical tourism sector via its service dimension. The communication of dental material manufacturers with dentists and the communicative actions that affect perceived value in cross-sectoral cooperation, the service quality perceived by dentists, the value perceived by end consumers, and the effect of the perceived value of stakeholders on the dental health tourism sector were clarified within the scope of the research findings. The analysis of stakeholder opinions obtained from secondary data constitutes the study's dataset. Likewise, literature review, document analysis, and content analysis were applied in terms of methodology.

Keywords: Dental Health Tourism, Cross-Sectoral Cooperation, Stakeholder Theory

JEL Classification: D46, D83, D85, I11, L83, Z32