PELANGGANECESSARY TO BUILD EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT BETWEEN PATIENTS AND HOSPITAL?

Background:Consumers who has emotial attachment towards a product/service tends to consume that product/service repeatedly. This is known as emotional branding. Emotional attachment between a consumer and a product can prevent his/her ?switching intention?. Emotional brandingconsists of four essential variables, which are ?relationship?, ?sensorial experience?, ?imagination?, and ?vision?. Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang Hospital (RS UMM) has a marketing strategy that is closely related to the four previously mentioned variables. This emotional branding strategy has unintentionally been implemented by RS UMM.An increase in inpatient visits and several unstructured interviews results with the inpatients in RS UMM conveysome signs of potential brand switching, which requires RS UMM to maintain its consumers? loyalty by minimizing their ?switching intention? to other hospitals. The purpose of this research is to find out the impact of ?emotional branding?to ?switching intention? of inpatient customers in RS UMM. Methods:This research uses quantitative cross sectional method. The population is the whole inpatient customers with samples of 90 people taken via purposive sampling. The respondents is patients who are aged 17 years and above who are currently hospitalized for at least one day. yang sedang rawat inap minimal satu hari. Multiple linear regression is used to analyse these data. Result:Based on unstructured interview with inpatient consumers, it can be concluded that they go through a pleasant sensorial experience through a spacious hospital design, giving a hotel-like ambience. They also experience ?imagination? during their visits to the mosque in RS UMM with its oriental architecture design. Analysis results indicates that emotional branding (relationship, sensorial experience, imagination, and vision) influence greatly towards customers??switching intention? (p<0,05) simultaneously. While there is no significant impact of ?relationship?and?sensorial experience? towards ?switching intention?(p=0,839 and p=0,997), ?imagination?and?vision? contributes to customers? ?switching intention?(p=0,023 and p=0,005).Emotional branding contributes as many as 23,6%, thus it can be said that variables within emotional branding is not a decisive factor on inpatient customers? ?switching intention? in RS. Despite that, ?emotional branding?can still be used as one of RS UMM?s marketing strategy to increase and maintain its consumers. Conclusion:Emotional branding (relationship, sensorial experience, imagination, and vision) is required in order to maintain the number of inpatient customers in RS UMM in order for them not to switch to other hospitals.