Service quality as an antecedent in enhancing customers’udbehavioural intentions: a case study of Malaysian army medicaludcenters

摘要

Behavioural intention is a customer preference to use services provided by service providers and this preferenceudmanifests itself in the form of the customer’s readiness to recommend, intention to repurchase, and deliver positiveudwords of mouth regarding the services provided. This has a lot to do with the ability of providers to effectively offerudservices which are not only tangible but also reliable, responsive, reassuring, and empathic. Extant studies in thisudfield reveal that the ability of service providers to appropriately deliver these qualities in performing daily job mayudhave a significant impact on customers’ behavioural intentions. Even though this relationship has been studiedudwidely the role of service quality as an important antecedent has been relatively ignored in current organizationaludquality research literature. In this light, this study was undertaken to measure the relationship between service qualityudand behavioural intention. Primary data were gathered from 128 customers and eleven administrative staff anduddoctors of the military hospitals in Peninsular Malaysia. The outcome of a SmartPLS path model analysisudconfirmed that the ability of organizations to properly implement quality in medical services would enhance theudintention of customers to continuously use the services.