Abstract:
The measurement ofservice quality and relationship between service quality and customer
satisfaction are arguable among the most important concerns in services marketing. The
researcher was attracted towards this area of study and searched to find important and
rarely researched industry for the study. After thepre-interview with the industry concerned
expertise and through the initial literature review, researcher found that the private hospital
industry is the less researched service industry not only in Sri Lanka even in international
research arena.
This study attempts to examine the relationship between quality of service and other
variables such as availability, timeliness, price and convenience and customer satisfaction
ofprivate hospitals in Colombo city of Sri Lanka. Most of the studies carried out related
to service quality failed to include these variables in analyzing the customer satisfaction.
Therefore this study mainly considered the factors like availability of services, timeliness
in providing services, charges for services provided and convenience to access the service.
Quality of service is quantified by giving values to reliability, responsiveness, empathy,
assurances and tangibility. Customer satisfaction is quantified by assigning values to
product (medical care), personnel, service, price, availability and conveniences.
The results suggest that there is a positive relationship between quality of .service and
customer satisfaction that is where it is identified that higher level of quality of service
result in higher level of satisfaction. In view of this, the study attempts to give description
and analysis of the characteristics and services provided by the selected private hospitals
based in capital of Sri Lanka.
