Relationship Quality and its Relation to Customer Loyalty─The Case of Health Examination Centers in C Medical Centers

• Main Authors: Liu Mei-Yun, 劉美雲
• Other Authors: Chen Ting-Yu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/76426491097199664782

碩士 === 長庚大學 === 企業管理研究所 === 92 === As a result of the increase in the national income and the upgrade in the education levels, as well as the prevalence of the “prevention is better than cure” concept, the people in Taiwan have exhibited heavier demand for health care service day by day. However, the service items covered under Taiwan’s National Health System (NHS) are limited, the potential of ‘paid-by-the-client’ package of health examination has become quite obvious. In this extremely competitive market, clients are provided with a wider than ever variety of packages of service items. Therefore, how to maintain a higher rate of customer retention and how to capture higher market share have become the most important challenges for hospital health examination centers. This study attempts to explore the key factors through which a health examination center can affect the relationship quality. And the relationship quality will affect customer loyalty through it as a mediating variable. The subjects surveyed are those who themselves pay for the packages of health examination provided by two hospital examination centers, one in northern Taiwan and the other in the south with 387 valid samples . Both descriptive statistics and the LIRSEL package are used to analyze the data collected and to test the hypotheses posed in this study. The study result indicated that: 1. The contact intensity between the health examination center and the subject has a significant and positive relationship with the health examination center’s relationship quality. 2. The health examination center’s service tangibility significantly and positively affects its relationship quality. 3. The health examination center’s service expertise significantly and positively affects its relationship quality. 4. The health examination center’s relationship quality significantly and positively affects the subject’s loyalty. 5. The contact intensity, service tangibility and expertise between the health examination center and the subjects will influence relationship quality, and will affect customer loyalty through the relationship quality as a mediating variable. 6. Service tangibility is the most influencing factor among the health examination center’s contact intensity, service tangibility and service expertise.