TITLE:
Validating Customer Loyalty Model Using Structural Equation Modelling in a Kenyan Hospital
AUTHORS:
Mahuro G. Mbuthia, Egondi Thaddaeus
KEYWORDS:
Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, Quality Service, Trust
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.2 No.4,
April
1,
2015
ABSTRACT:
In
healthcare services, customer satisfaction measurement is increasingly gaining
emphasis due to researchers’ and clinicians’ desire which is to get outcomes
that reflect varying unique patient perceptions. Ultimately, the main aim of
every patient is to have their disease or health problem alleviated. These parameters
alienate healthcare service from other service contexts. The study sought to
assess quality levels and examine drivers of patients’ loyalty in Aga Khan
University Hospital, Nairobi (AKUHN) in Kenya. Semi-structured questionnaire
was used to collect data through face-to-face interviews. The contextual
measures mainly used in social, business and education fields were adopted and
customized to fit healthcare environment. The 251 respondents were randomly
selected and were proportional to the cluster of the services they sought. The
causal relationship between service quality and customer loyalty as mediated by
customer satisfaction and trust was analyzed using structural equation
modeling. The model converged with good fit statistics. Both trust and customer
satisfaction exhibited significantly strong mediating effects between quality
of service and patients’ loyalty. This implies that customer satisfaction and
trust are key parameters in explaining the strength of the significant
relationship between quality of service and customer loyalty.