The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of healthcare service quality on consumption value, attitudes and behaviors of consumers in long-term care hospitals applying the Value-Attitude-Behavior model, of which the findings are to be used for marketing strategy development for long-term care hospitals.
For this purpose, questionnaires are designed to measure healthcare service quality based on examination of domestic long-term care hospitals and review of existing literatures. The structural relationship is found among consumption value, attitudes and the intention to continuous use with application of the VAB model.
To collect samples, eight long-term care hospitals are selected from Sejong, Daejeon and Chungcheongnam.
Data analysis results show that first, the functional value is positively affected with a statistical significance by healthcare environment and indoor environment, but not by medical staffs.
Second, the emotional value is statistically significantly correlated with medical staffs and indoor environment, but not with healthcare environment.
Third, the situational value has positive correlations with medical staffs and indoor environment, but not with healthcare environment.
Fourth, the rarity value is positively affected by all of three healthcare service quality, that is, medical staffs, healthcare environment and indoor environment.
Fifth, the health value is affected only by healthcare environment among the healthcare service quality, as medical staffs or indoor environment does not affect significantly.
Those findings suggest that a realm of healthcare service quality which includes medical staffs, healthcare environment, and indoor environment is statistically significant in improving consumption value compared to a realm of administrative service.
Sixth, among consumption value, the emotional value and the health value are positively correlated with attitudes toward the hospital, while the functional and the rarity value are not. It suggests that the patients of long-term care hospitals want feelings at home by having trust in the hospitals and emotional supports.
Seventh, attitudes toward the hospital has positive correlation with the intention to continuous use, reaffirming the existing literatures.
Lastly, the sense of wellbeing is found to play a moderating role in the relationship between healthcare service and consumption value and between attitudes and the intention to continuous use.
Based on those results, this study is to contribute to sustainability of the domestic long-term care hospitals through marketing strategy development and further study development upon healthcare service quality.