Service quality towards reaching hyper customer satisfaction in private hospitals (empirical setting from Colombo city of Sri Lanka)

Abstract

The measurement ofservice quality and relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction are arguable among the most important concerns in services marketing. The researcher was attracted towards this area of study and searched to find important and rarely researched industry for the study. After thepre-interview with the industry concerned expertise and through the initial literature review, researcher found that the private hospital industry is the less researched service industry not only in Sri Lanka even in international research arena. This study attempts to examine the relationship between quality of service and other variables such as availability, timeliness, price and convenience and customer satisfaction ofprivate hospitals in Colombo city of Sri Lanka. Most of the studies carried out related to service quality failed to include these variables in analyzing the customer satisfaction. Therefore this study mainly considered the factors like availability of services, timeliness in providing services, charges for services provided and convenience to access the service. Quality of service is quantified by giving values to reliability, responsiveness, empathy, assurances and tangibility. Customer satisfaction is quantified by assigning values to product (medical care), personnel, service, price, availability and conveniences. The results suggest that there is a positive relationship between quality of .service and customer satisfaction that is where it is identified that higher level of quality of service result in higher level of satisfaction. In view of this, the study attempts to give description and analysis of the characteristics and services provided by the selected private hospitals based in capital of Sri Lanka.