Involvement as Moderator of the Relationship between Service Quality and Behavioural Outcomes of Hospital Consumers

Abstract

Service quality has received a great deal of attention in the marketing literature. Despite extensive academic research on the role of service quality as predictor of consumers' behavioural outcomes (satisfaction, re-patronage intention, and positive word-of-mouth) service marketers know very little about the moderating role of involvement on their relationship in the hospital services context. The authors bring together relevant literature in this area and propose a cognitive framework for effectively managing service quality delivery to hospital consumers. Using data from 427 hospital consumers from four multi-speciality hospitals with varying bed sizes in Chennai metropolitan city in TamilNadu, India, the authors examined the proposed hypotheses. The results indicate that involvement acts equally as a moderator as well as a predictor.