7 CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1. Service Quality The issue of service quality is very common among the researchers and practitioners. Since there is no fixed definition of quality, Reeves and Bednar (1994) in Zaim, Bayyurt, & Zaim (2010) define quality in term of excellence, value, conformance to specification, and meeting or exceeding customer’s expectations. Philip B. Crosby, which popularizes the concept of Zero Defects—doing it right in the first time, delineates quality as conformance to requirements (Crosby, 1979; Suarez, 1992). Thereafter, according to Deming’s definition in Suarez (1992), quality is depends in customers’ perception. Management needs to know the customers’ needs to meet what customers’ expect about the product or service provided. The challenge is to translate the future needs into measurable characteristics, which will turn out as product or service that can satisfy the customers (Deming, 1986). There are two fundamental parameters in considering the quality measurement which are, (1) object that we measure, and (2) a person who give the viewpoint (Wyszewianski, 2005). The object measured presents in seven definitionable attributes that include technical performance, management of interpersonal relationship, amenities of care, responsiveness, efficiency, and the effectively of cost. Thereafter, the viewpoint can be presented from the clinician, patient, payer, and the society. The viewpoint of the health care quality might differ, depends on which perspective it seen. 2.2. Patient Satisfaction Service quality and customer satisfaction are a major goal in current organizations (Vinagre & Neves, 2008). In general, customer satisfaction actually influences the people’s choice of product or service to consume and the decision to return (Kozak & Rimmington, 2000). The satisfaction of patient is highly related to their expectation. Wu, Huang, and Chou (2014) define expectation as the anticipation or looking forward to something while experiencing something, and it directly influence the satisfaction. Refer to the definition, it obvious that each patient in a hospital will expect treatment from the medical team. 8 Patient satisfaction can be likened as a personal evaluation of health care provision and the providers. The satisfaction ratings actually cannot consider as the result, but more objectively based on patient perception (Ware, Snyder, Wright, & Davies, 1983). The patient satisfaction became very essential since both patient and the health care service provider can make decision (Peprah & Atarah, 2014). Several studies also state that besides the positive implication on patient retention and loyalty, patient satisfaction also influences the compliance towards the physician advice and the healing process (Calnan, 1988; Roter et al., 1987). As a result, the studies about patient satisfaction employ a wide range of measurements depend on the definition of patient satisfaction (Al Qatari and Haran, 1999). 2.3. SERVQUAL Dimensions According to Parasuraman et al. (1985), there are three underlying themes on services, (1) Comparing to goods quality, evaluate service quality is much more difficult; (2) The perception of service quality is a result of comparison between the customers’ expectations towards the actual performance; (3) The evaluation of service quality is not only depends on the outcome, but also involves the process of service delivery. SERVQUAL is originally introduced by Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry (1985) as a tool to measure service quality by analyzes the gap between the customers’ expectation and actual performance. Several countries have used SERVQUAL method for the healthcare service evaluations (Garrard & Narayan, 2013). Based on Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry (1988), the dimension of SERVQUAL has been narrowed into five, which are: (1) Tangibles, physical facilities, equipment, and appearance of personnel, (2) Reliability, ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately, (3) Responsiveness, willingness to help customers and provide prompt service, (4) Assurance, knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to inspire trust and confidence, (5) Empathy, caring, individualized attention the firm provides its customers. In the last few years, some research about service quality has been conducted using the SERVQUAL method in many industries such as hotels (Markovic and Raspor, 2004), health care (Soita, 2012; Peprah and Atarah, 2014), accounting and audit firms (Ismail, 9 2006), restaurants (Andaleeb and Conway, 2006), and insurance (Tsoukatos, Marwa, and Rand, 2004).