MEASURING SERVICE QUALITY AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY IN THE SENIOR-CARE ORGANIZATIONS IN RURAL AREAS OF CENTRAL TAIWAN

Chan-Chien Chiu, Wei-Chiang Chen and Hsing-Yun Chang

International Journal of Management and Marketing Research, 2010, vol. 3, issue 2, 65-74

Abstract: With rapid aging of the Taiwan population, the senior-care market has been growing in rural areas of Taiwan. Competition among senior care market players also soared in the past decade and consumers have been demanding better quality performances. This has forced the Senior Care Organizations (SCOs) to fine-tune their employee training programs to meet specific customer needs. The authors examined the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction of the SCOs residents in rural areas of central Taiwan based on the ten dimensions: access, communication, competence, courtesy, credibility,reliability, responsiveness, security, tangibles, and employee’s understanding their customer. The 143 effective data were collected from 3,008 senior residents living in the 94 private SCOs in rural areas of central Taiwan, where a random sample was selected to participate the survey through drop-off and face to face interview. T-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multiple regression analysis were used to test the relationship. The statistical results showed that courtesy and security were significantly and positively related to customer satisfaction. The results also show that demographic factors of age and health conditions have highly significant impact on customer satisfaction when living in the senior-care organizations. This finding, among others, suggests that senior-care operators in rural areas of central Taiwan might have overlooked the above mentioned major dimensions as factors leading to customer satisfaction and, ultimately, to a sustainable competitive edge. To pinpoint what the senior residents really need, the SCOs in central Taiwan should keep communicating with them, to identify the priority dimensions towards customer satisfaction.

Keywords: customer satisfaction; service quality; consumer behavior; senior care; central Taiwan. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M12 M31 M37 M38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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