Service Quality Management and Customer Satisfaction – An Empirical Study of Selected Ayurveda Hospitals in Gujarat

Ayurveda is one of the oldest and famous natural health care systems mostly practicing in south Asian region. It is originated in India and has developed in different countries through religious and cultural background of the society. The main purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the service quality on patient satisfaction in the prominent Ayurvedic Hospitals in Gujarat. The study is carried out as a questionnaire survey and used stratified random sampling method to collect data from 150 patients as respondents. The five dimensional SERVQUAL model proposed by Parasuraman et al. (1985) was
employed to measure the service quality dimensions related to the selected Ayurvedic hospitals. The model compares patients’ perception and expectation of service received across five dimensions of service quality including reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibility. The results of this study shown that there is no overall significantly different between patients' perception and expectation, overall service quality score is found positive that reveal hospitals are able to service as expected. This study find the patient’s largest positive gap between perception and expectation is in terms of reliability while the largest negative gap in relation to the assurance. The findings help to understand the areas where higher authorities of the hospitals have needed to improve.