Examining the nexus of relationship marketing and patient loyalty: The mediation and moderation analysis

Abstract

Studies on association amongst relationship marketing and loyalty of patients are still trying to establish its presence in the healthcare management. Also, the variables impacting this association are still in exploratory phases. The research is being carried out for determining the nature of that relationship and also examining mediating and moderating effect of different variables. Data collected through various Scopus and other online databases have been used for this study. Literature review has been carried out by dividing it into three parts, relationship marketing, patient loyalty and variables like patient satisfaction, age, gender, family size, health insurance, etc. Primary data was collected from 938 patients of private healthcare providers by administering questionnaire online as well as in person. PLS-SEM was applied to analyze the data, which was used after testing the instrument for reliability and validity. After Covid-19 pandemic everyone felt need of a good health insurance but in actual many people were not having a simple health insurance cover also. Hospitals will have a major role in promoting health insurance and in turn providing quality service, but their role is currently limited to processing of health insurance and nothing more. Model from the study will help understand organizations the strength and direction of relationship between patient loyalty and efforts taken for marketing along with impact of moderating and mediating variable on the same. Future research can look into the other variables that will moderate or mediate the relationship in turn will help not only healthcare organizations but insurance companies also to develop product or service according to requirement of relationship. Research focuses on impact of moderating effect of health insurance on association amongst marketing efforts taken for relationship marketing and loyalty of patients through patient satisfactions’ mediation which was not studied before this. The study aims to test the conceptual model of moderating impact of health insurance on association between relationship marketing, patient loyalty and patient satisfaction using SEM.