IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/vikjou/v46y2021i2p99-111.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Role of Communication, Influence, and Satisfaction in Patient Recommendations of a Physician

Author

Listed:
  • Payal Mehra
  • Anubhav Mishra

Abstract

As per the India Brand Equity Foundation, by 2022, India’s healthcare market is expected to reach US$372 billion. While exponential growth in the availability of private hospitals has been recorded in the past few years, many hospitals are not able to attract enough patients due to poor quality of services, unavailability of skilled healthcare workers, and unethical medical practices. These issues were painfully exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients rely on recommendations from friends and relatives to select a physician or hospital. This study undertakes a customer-oriented view of patients to explore patients’ perceptions of physicians’ communication and how it influences the recommendation of a physician. For the study, data are collected from 626 patients spread across three cities of North India. We find that physician communication leads to favourable recommendations, and the patient’s perceived influence and satisfaction play an important role in this process. The physician should display empathy and compassion while communicating to patients, which helps build a favourable perception of the physician. This leads to a higher level of satisfaction with the healthcare provider. Furthermore, the study also examines the effects of socio-demographic variables, such as patient’s income, patient’s gender, and physician’s gender. People with high (vs low) income are more satisfied with physician communication, whereas people with low (vs high) income are more likely to recommend a physician. Interestingly, female patients are more satisfied with a physician’s communication skills than males. Aligned with the patriarchal society, patients show more acceptance of male (vs female) doctors, but in contrast, patients are more likely to recommend a female (vs male) doctor. So, we recommend that healthcare providers ensure that patients get sufficient time to spend with their physicians to discuss problems and not ‘rush’ the patients to improve revenues.

Suggested Citation

  • Payal Mehra & Anubhav Mishra, 2021. "Role of Communication, Influence, and Satisfaction in Patient Recommendations of a Physician," Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers, , vol. 46(2), pages 99-111, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:vikjou:v:46:y:2021:i:2:p:99-111
    DOI: 10.1177/02560909211027090
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02560909211027090
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/02560909211027090?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anubhav Mishra & S M Satish, 2016. "eWOM: Extant Research Review and Future Research Avenues," Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers, , vol. 41(3), pages 222-233, September.
    2. Mishra, Anubhav & Maheswarappa, Satish S. & Maity, Moutusy & Samu, Sridhar, 2018. "Adolescent's eWOM intentions: An investigation into the roles of peers, the Internet and gender," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 394-405.
    3. Gurjeet Kaur Sahi & Sanjeewani Sehgal & Rita Sharma, 2017. "Predicting Customers Recommendation from Co-creation of Value, Customization and Relational Value," Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers, , vol. 42(1), pages 19-35, March.
    4. Leisen, Birgit & Hyman, Michael R., 2004. "Antecedents and consequences of trust in a service provider: The case of primary care physicians," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 57(9), pages 990-999, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rajesh Chandwani, 2021. "Stakeholders in the Indian Healthcare Sector," Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers, , vol. 46(2), pages 65-70, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anuja Shukla & Anubhav Mishra, 2023. "Role of Review Length, Review Valence and Review Credibility on Consumer’s Online Hotel Booking Intention," FIIB Business Review, , vol. 12(4), pages 403-414, December.
    2. Anuja Shukla & Anubhav Mishra, 2023. "Effects of Visual Information and Argument Concreteness on Purchase Intention of Consumers Towards Online Hotel Booking," Vision, , vol. 27(5), pages 639-649, November.
    3. Wang, Le & Luo, Xin (Robert) & Li, Han, 2022. "Envy or conformity? An empirical investigation of peer influence on the purchase of non-functional items in mobile free-to-play games," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 308-324.
    4. Affifa Sardar & Amir Manzoor & Khurram Adeel Shaikh & Liaqat Ali, 2021. "An Empirical Examination of the Impact of eWom Information on Young Consumers’ Online Purchase Intention: Mediating Role of eWom Information Adoption," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(4), pages 21582440211, October.
    5. Anastasia Stathopoulou & Tommy Kweku Quansah & George Balabanis, 2022. "The Blinding Effects of Team Identification on Sports Corruption: Cross-Cultural Evidence from Sub-Saharan African Countries," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 179(2), pages 511-529, August.
    6. Philp, Matthew & Ashworth, Laurence, 2020. "I should have known better!: When firm-caused failure leads to self-image concerns and reduces negative word-of-mouth," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 283-293.
    7. Flecha-Ortíz, José & Santos-Corrada, María & Dones-González, Virgin & López-González, Evelyn & Vega, Alberto, 2021. "Millennials & Snapchat: Self-expression through its use and its influence on purchase motivation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 798-805.
    8. Agnieszka Zablocki & Bodo Schlegelmilch & Michael J. Houston, 2019. "How valence, volume and variance of online reviews influence brand attitudes," AMS Review, Springer;Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 9(1), pages 61-77, June.
    9. Chatterjee, Sheshadri & Chaudhuri, Ranjan & Kumar, Ajay & Lu Wang, Cheng & Gupta, Shivam, 2023. "Impacts of consumer cognitive process to ascertain online fake review: A cognitive dissonance theory approach," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    10. Benedicktus, Ray L., 2011. "The effects of 3rd party consensus information on service expectations and online trust," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 64(8), pages 846-853, August.
    11. Jain, Geetika & Paul, Justin & Shrivastava, Archana, 2021. "Hyper-personalization, co-creation, digital clienteling and transformation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 12-23.
    12. Rishikesh Bhaiswar & N. Meenakshi & Deepak Chawla, 2021. "Evolution of Electronic Word of Mouth: A Systematic Literature Review Using Bibliometric Analysis of 20 Years (2000–2020)," FIIB Business Review, , vol. 10(3), pages 215-231, September.
    13. Chatterjee, Sheshadri & Chaudhuri, Ranjan & Mariani, Marcello & Fosso Wamba, Samuel, 2023. "The consequences of innovation failure: An innovation capabilities and dynamic capabilities perspective," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    14. Rodney Duffett, 2020. "The YouTube Marketing Communication Effect on Cognitive, Affective and Behavioural Attitudes among Generation Z Consumers," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-25, June.
    15. Chatterjee, Sheshadri & Chaudhuri, Ranjan & Kumar, Ajay & Aránega, Alba Yela & Biswas, Baidyanath, 2023. "Development of an integrative model for electronic vendor relationship management for improving technological innovation, social change and sustainability performance," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 186(PB).
    16. McColl-Kennedy, Janet R. & Hogan, Suellen J. & Witell, Lars & Snyder, Hannah, 2017. "Cocreative customer practices: Effects of health care customer value cocreation practices on well-being," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 55-66.
    17. Cynthia dos Santos Hentschke & Carlos Torres Formoso & Marcia Elisa Echeveste, 2020. "A Customer Integration Framework for the Development of Mass Customised Housing Projects," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(21), pages 1-26, October.
    18. Laurent Maubisson, 2016. "Confiance, risque perçu et intention d’usage : application à la vaccination contre la grippe," Post-Print hal-02499741, HAL.
    19. Kumar, Avinash & Chakraborty, Shibashish & Bala, Pradip Kumar, 2023. "Text mining approach to explore determinants of grocery mobile app satisfaction using online customer reviews," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    20. Dušan Mladenović & Visar Rrustemi & Sebastian Martin & Prateek Kalia & Rahul Chawdhary, 2022. "Effects of Sociodemographic Variables on Electronic Word of Mouth: Evidence from Emerging Economies," MUNI ECON Working Papers 2022-02, Masaryk University, revised Feb 2023.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:vikjou:v:46:y:2021:i:2:p:99-111. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.