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Consumer evaluation of complaint handling in the Dutch health insurance market
BACKGROUND: How companies deal with complaints is a particularly challenging aspect in managing the quality of their service. In this study we test the direct and relative effects of service quality dimensions on consumer complaint satisfaction evaluations and trust in a company in the Dutch health...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2011
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250957/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22085762 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-11-310 |
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author | Wendel, Sonja de Jong, Judith D Curfs, Emile C |
author_facet | Wendel, Sonja de Jong, Judith D Curfs, Emile C |
author_sort | Wendel, Sonja |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: How companies deal with complaints is a particularly challenging aspect in managing the quality of their service. In this study we test the direct and relative effects of service quality dimensions on consumer complaint satisfaction evaluations and trust in a company in the Dutch health insurance market. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey design was used. Survey data of 150 members of a Dutch insurance panel who lodged a complaint at their healthcare insurer within the past 12 months were surveyed. The data were collected using a questionnaire containing validated multi-item measures. These measures assess the service quality dimensions consisting of functional quality and technical quality and consumer complaint satisfaction evaluations consisting of complaint satisfaction and overall satisfaction with the company after complaint handling. Respondents' trust in a company after complaint handling was also measured. Using factor analysis, reliability and validity of the measures were assessed. Regression analysis was used to examine the relationships between these variables. RESULTS: Overall, results confirm the hypothesized direct and relative effects between the service quality dimensions and consumer complaint satisfaction evaluations and trust in the company. No support was found for the effect of technical quality on overall satisfaction with the company. This outcome might be driven by the context of our study; namely, consumers get in touch with a company to resolve a specific problem and therefore might focus more on complaint satisfaction and less on overall satisfaction with the company. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the model we present is valid in the context of the Dutch health insurance market. Management is able to increase consumers' complaint satisfaction, overall satisfaction with the company, and trust in the company by improving elements of functional and technical quality. Furthermore, we show that functional and technical quality do not influence consumer satisfaction evaluations and trust in the company to the same extent. Therefore, it is important for managers to be aware of the type of consumer satisfaction they are measuring when evaluating the handling of complaints within their company. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3250957 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2011 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-32509572012-01-05 Consumer evaluation of complaint handling in the Dutch health insurance market Wendel, Sonja de Jong, Judith D Curfs, Emile C BMC Health Serv Res Research Article BACKGROUND: How companies deal with complaints is a particularly challenging aspect in managing the quality of their service. In this study we test the direct and relative effects of service quality dimensions on consumer complaint satisfaction evaluations and trust in a company in the Dutch health insurance market. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey design was used. Survey data of 150 members of a Dutch insurance panel who lodged a complaint at their healthcare insurer within the past 12 months were surveyed. The data were collected using a questionnaire containing validated multi-item measures. These measures assess the service quality dimensions consisting of functional quality and technical quality and consumer complaint satisfaction evaluations consisting of complaint satisfaction and overall satisfaction with the company after complaint handling. Respondents' trust in a company after complaint handling was also measured. Using factor analysis, reliability and validity of the measures were assessed. Regression analysis was used to examine the relationships between these variables. RESULTS: Overall, results confirm the hypothesized direct and relative effects between the service quality dimensions and consumer complaint satisfaction evaluations and trust in the company. No support was found for the effect of technical quality on overall satisfaction with the company. This outcome might be driven by the context of our study; namely, consumers get in touch with a company to resolve a specific problem and therefore might focus more on complaint satisfaction and less on overall satisfaction with the company. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the model we present is valid in the context of the Dutch health insurance market. Management is able to increase consumers' complaint satisfaction, overall satisfaction with the company, and trust in the company by improving elements of functional and technical quality. Furthermore, we show that functional and technical quality do not influence consumer satisfaction evaluations and trust in the company to the same extent. Therefore, it is important for managers to be aware of the type of consumer satisfaction they are measuring when evaluating the handling of complaints within their company. BioMed Central 2011-11-15 /pmc/articles/PMC3250957/ /pubmed/22085762 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-11-310 Text en Copyright ©2011 Wendel et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Wendel, Sonja de Jong, Judith D Curfs, Emile C Consumer evaluation of complaint handling in the Dutch health insurance market |
title | Consumer evaluation of complaint handling in the Dutch health insurance market |
title_full | Consumer evaluation of complaint handling in the Dutch health insurance market |
title_fullStr | Consumer evaluation of complaint handling in the Dutch health insurance market |
title_full_unstemmed | Consumer evaluation of complaint handling in the Dutch health insurance market |
title_short | Consumer evaluation of complaint handling in the Dutch health insurance market |
title_sort | consumer evaluation of complaint handling in the dutch health insurance market |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250957/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22085762 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-11-310 |
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