Abstract:
This research has its purposes (1) to study the content of service herbal healing centers in Chiang Rai province, (2) to study consumers behavior of using services from herbal healing centers in Chiang Rai Province, and (3) to study perspectives of consumers toward marketing mix factors of herbal healing centers in Chiang Rai province. The samples of this research are 389 Thai consumers who have come and used services from herbal healing centers in Chiang Rai. The tools for this research are questionnaires and structured interviews of owners of 3-size health care centers; big size for 2 institutes, medium size for 2 institutes, and small size for 2 institutes located in Chiang Rai where are related to the use of herbal healing centers.
The results of the research from structural interviews with owners of herbal healing centers show that marketing mix factors (7Ps) including product, price, place, promotion, people, physical
and process factor. All these 7Ps affect management herbal healing centers in Chiang Rai in all 6 places. The first, P-Product such as management of sales places for products made from herbs responds the needs of consumers. The second, P-Price is shown in services-affirmed welfare of health warranties and suitable prices set. The third, P-Place is places to sell herbal products that have to be convenient and have to have enough parking lots-various contact channels, accessible information provided. The forth, P-Promotion promotes marketing of health care institutes.
The fifth, P-People is such as managing the number of employees that suit the sizes of health care institutes-the work of employees and improvement of employees. The sixth, P-Physical is such as area management of health care institutes that needs to be clean, arranged and provides convenient services for customers. The seventh, P-Procedure factor is the procedure provided broad services and security of treatments.
The results have many questionnaires show that the most respondents are female consumer; age between 51-60 years old with primary school education level, work as agriculturalists, and earn income around 15,001-30,000 baht. The main purpose to use herbal health services is to take care of health. Parents and families are reasons they make decision to receive services. The payments of receiving health services are less than 100 baht. The places for receiving services are sub-district hospitals. The consumers consider receiving services from herbal healing centers the highest level such as a reason of reasonable prices factor, product factor, people factor, process factor, place factor and physical factors respectively and promotion factor is high level. The results of hypotheses are marketing mix factors of process and physical factors affect decision making of customers to choose services from herbal healing centers in Chiang Rai province in terms of purposes to receive services. The place factor to sell products is related to decision making of customers to choose services from herbal healing centers in terms of dates and times to receive services and the promotion factor and the physical factor are related to decision making to receive services of customers in term of payments of services. Customers who have different educational levels and approximate income have their diverse opinion towards the marketing mix factors which can be shown as the statistical significance level less than 0.05.