Validating Customer Loyalty Model Using Structural Equation Modelling in a Kenyan Hospital

In healthcare services, customer satisfaction measurement is increasingly gaining emphasis due to researchers’ and clinicians’ desire which is to get outcomes that reflect varying unique patient perceptions. Ultimately, the main aim of every patient is to have their disease or health problem alleviated. These parameters alienate healthcare service from other service contexts. The study sought to assess quality levels and examine drivers of patients’ loyalty in Aga Khan University Hospital, Nairobi (AKUHN) in Kenya. Semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data through face-to-face interviews. The contextual measures mainly used in social, business and education fields were adopted and customized to fit healthcare environment. The 251 respondents were randomly selected and were proportional to the cluster of the services they sought. The causal relationship between service quality and customer loyalty as mediated by customer satisfaction and trust was analyzed using structural equation modeling. The model converged with good fit statistics. Both trust and customer satisfaction exhibited significantly strong mediating effects between quality of service and patients’ loyalty. This implies that customer satisfaction and trust are key parameters in explaining the strength of the significant relationship between quality of service and customer loyalty.