Customer-orientated Research and Private Healthcare Services: A Literature Review

Over the past two decades, Indian healthcare service providers have given priority to customer satisfaction along with quality treatment. However there is little evidence of leading Indian researchers working on healthcare customers as in other areas of service sectors. Whatever researches have been conducted are fragmented or are specific in nature. Consequently it is unclear what exactly has been learned by research on customer of healthcare services and what questions remain to be answered. This paper addresses these concerns by reviewing the current research literature on healthcare service customers, and offers propositions to extend our understanding, providing directions for providing customer-oriented healthcare service based on our current understanding, which also suggests for future research. In light of this, the purpose of the present study is to develop an extensive and systematic literature search on healthcare customers’ related research to understand the link between different healthcare customers and their requirements from service providers. The paper further identifies the factors affecting healthcare customers and their satisfaction levels. Finally, it has been concluded that further research is necessary to develop conceptual underpinning and analytical models based on quantitative studies.