The Research about Image on Korean Medicine

Objectives: Recently, the utility rate of Korean-Medical service has been a 6 percent of the domestic market share in medical service, so there is a lot of effort to increase utility rate of Korean medical service. However, in spite of the importance of image to promotion, there are still few studies about image of Korean medicine. Thus, the purpose of this study was to suggest ways to increase utility rate of Korean medical service by surveying and analysing recognition of image of Korean Medicine. Methods: People aged between 20s and 40s were targets of investigation. We divided respondents into three groups depending on relation approximation with Korean medicine (weak-related group, normal-related group, strong-related group). The questionnaire consisted of questions about images of Korean medicine, conducted through online and personal interviews. Results: In total, 282 members responded to the survey and the results of the analysis were as follows. The more a person was related to Korean medicine, the greater the tendency to experience Korean medical service. The most associated taste about Korean medical institutions was Bitterness, smell was smell of Korean medicine, color was yellow, feeling was warm, sound (instrument) was drum, and treatment pattern was Acupuncture, respectively. The most associated image of acupuncture was painful, and the most associated age of Korean medical doctors was 40s. The most associated general term of Korean medicine was physical constitution, and most associated pathological term was extravasated blood. Conclusions: This study can be very useful for future image marketing of Korean medicine because there have been no other studies about image on Korean medicine before now. But this study has also some limits like area, respondent selection, etc., so a more detailed and comprehensive survey is needed.

한의학 관련 이미지 연구