The Impact of Consumers’ Service Encounter Expectation on Their Service Encounter Perception in Healthcare Services

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of consumers’ service encounter expectations on their service encounter perceptions in healthcare service (especially in cosmetic surgeries). PAKSERV scale was used for measuring service encounter expectation and perception. CFA analysis was conducted to test and validate the dimensions of PAKSERV scale. The data were gathered from more than 200 health clinics in Tehran city. All the respondents were consumers of cosmetic surgeries in these clinics. Finally, all the analyses were conducted by using 317 questionnaires. A confirmatory factor analysis successfully confirmed all the dimensions of PAKSERV scale. The results show that consumers’ expectations have a considerable impact on their perceptions in service encounters. It is also revealed that consumers’ perceptions from services are much lower than their expectations, and that they experience low-quality services which may cause dissatisfaction from healthcare services. Tangibility, reliability and assurance are the key issues that they expect, which have not been met successfully in cosmetic services. Furthermore, it should be noted that for providing high-quality services and achieving customers’ satisfaction, healthcare services (i.e. cosmetic clinics) should consider costumers’ expectations with respect to the aforementioned criteria.

Keywords

• service encounter
• expectation
• perception
• health care