Understanding health consumer value: service marketing perspective

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to clarify and explain patient-centered health choices, facilitating health-care providers' service orientation. Design/methodology/approach - Extensive literature review has been done to extract seven constructs (five dimensions of SERVQUAL, perceived service cost (PSC), and reference) and their underlying 28 items to be quantified. A survey of 201 health consumers was conducted to rate those variables and their constructs. Descriptive statistics and structural equation modeling are utilized to delineate and explicate factors. Findings - The confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that responsiveness has the highest predictive power in explaining hospital choice intention. However, PSC, the only construct, is not statistically significant. The models are considered to have satisfactory reliability, validity, and acceptable fit. Research limitations/implications - Since the study was administered in Comilla city, the generalizations should be exploited carefully. Future studies can be carried out on the behavioral patterns of patients and attitudes of health-care providers with respect to the discussed factors and variables. Practical implications - The result highlights patients' service expectations that can be carefully and creatively applied in the service marketing program, improving doctors' and nurses' service orientation, developing physical evidence, and managing references to communicate service value to patients. Originality/value - What health consumers emphasize and how they incorporate service quality dimensions into hospital choice intention has stayed almost unexplored in the existing literature in Bangladesh. This study provides valuable insights into the meaning of patients' choices, which will help practitioners and researchers to formulate marketing strategies that improve health-care outcomes and are acceptable to patients.