Impact of trust, sales agent and service delivery on health insurance holder satisfaction and experience

ABSTRACT

Purpose

The communities of the world need health insurance services during and after COVID-19. This study aims to evaluate the perspectives on the service quality of health insurance companies by expanding the service quality model based on the disconfirmation expectation theory.

Methodology

This proposed model adds various factors like sales agents, trust, and service delivery to the service quality model. The questionnaires were distributed to health insurance policyholders. The descriptive research study, structural equation modelling, was used to analyse the data. Four hundred and eighteen respondents' data were collected using a convenient sampling method from June 2021 to December 2021.

Findings

The dimension of service quality was confirmed, except for reliability. Reliability has shown a negative impact on consumer satisfaction. Trust seems to be the most influential dimension for consumer satisfaction in the proposed model. Service delivery has a positive impact on customer satisfaction, but sales agents have a negative impact on customer satisfaction. Hence, health insurance companies must improve the service quality of their sales agents.

Originality

The novelty of this research paper lies in the expansion of the service quality model, based on the disconfirmation expectation theory, to evaluate the service quality of health insurance companies.

KEYWORDS:

• Health insurance
• service quality
• service delivery
• trust
• sales agent
• reliability

Acknowledgments

We would to thank Department of Hospital Management for providing the infrastructure facility to us for the complication of the research study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declaration of conflicting interest

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

The research has been done with the grant of Dr. Nimesh P Bhojak received from IMPRESS ICSSR Project. [Grant Number IMPRESS/P1585/2018-2019/ICSSR].

Notes on contributors

Nimesh Bhojak

Dr. Nimesh Bhojak is currently working as an assistant professor at the Department of Hospital Management at HNGU Patan. He is a financial management and health economist faculty member with basic training in financial management and a Master's and Bachelor's in financial management. He guides the PhD scholar who received the SHODH Doctoral Fellowship. His research and teaching interests include personal health finance, public health finance, corporate-based healthcare finance, hospital finance, health insurance, health econometrics, and the application of financing models in healthcare. He has received minor and major research funding from various funding institutions. He has published research papers in different peer-reviewed international and national journals.

Chanduji Thakor

Dr. Chanduji Thakor currently works as an Assistant Professor at S K School of Business Management, Department of Commerce and Management, Hemchandracharya North Gujarat University Patan Gujarat. He is Marketing Management and Marketing Research faculty. His doctoral work focuses on Supply chain management.

Mohammadali Momin

Mr. Mohammadali Momin is a Ph.D. scholar under the Faculty of Commerce at Veer Narmad South Gujarat University Surat and also awarded by SHODH the Doctoral Fellowship from Government of Gujarat. He has a specialization in Finance Management and Accountancy. He has worked on various funded research projects as Research Assistant. He has published research articles in Scopus/Web of Science/UGC Care and other peered reviewed journals.