Neural Network-Enhanced Structural Equation Modeling of Competitive Communication Leversin Hospital Services

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the extant literature of service quality and its widely
measurement instrument, SERVQUAL, through a “communication lever” emphasis. In particular, the
primary and secondary communication levers, operationalized through the mediating role of empathic caring
in association with the tangible, assurance, reliability and responsiveness dimensions of SERVQUAL, and
treatment pricing, are shown as importantly valid but missing theoretical explanations. In doing so, it
expands the transactional aspect of service quality to beyond, including not the least, the communicative
signals, and thus, can easily embrace other important constructs such as brand trust, identity of the hospital
and images, into considerations. In this study, 477 patients from both the private and public hospitals located
in Chiang Rai, Thailand participated. While the data analysis makes use of advanced statistics such as
structural equation modeling (SEM), neural network simulation is also exploited, which sheds light to the
significant role of patient satisfaction in maintaining continuing relationship with the hospital, and thus
testifying to the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) architecture in existence and guides the structural
equation model (SEM)’s path analysis. Numerous aspects of implications are also provided in this paper.