Effects of customer-value perception and anticipation on relationship quality and customer loyalty in medical tourism services industry

Abstract

The dynamic customer value perceived and predicted by service providers may be the key factors to design an appropriate health and medical tourism service offering for consumers. However, the interaction between service provider and customer is the primary core of service businesses of different natures. Thus, the main purpose of this research is to investigate the influence of the customer value anticipation on customer loyalty and perceived quality of the customer-supplier relationship. There are three important findings in this research: First, this study showed that predicting customer value is a key to maintaining a relationship between companies and customers. Second, the study showed that customer value is dynamic and depends on the customers' degree of satisfaction, trust and commitment. Companies must improve their customer value anticipation capacity in order to strengthen the long-term relationship with their customers. Third, the study also found that customer loyalty varies depending on the quality of the relationship with the service-provider and that this relationship has various dimensions. Finally, the study showed that contrary to satisfaction and trust, commitment has a special effect on action loyalty, such that the customers exhibit their intentions directly through action when customer and company have a committed relationship.