Inter-Relationship Among the Extent of Past Consultations, Recommendation, Satisfaction, and Loyalty in Patient-Doctor Relationship: An Empirical Study

The present study examines the relative roles of external recommendations and internally felt satisfaction in influencing patient loyalty to a doctor. It establishes that recommendations do result in preliminary loyalty formation in the patient to the doctor, but only until the formation of own experiences; the significance of external sources of recommendation in the determination of patient loyalty becomes insignificant thenceforth. Implications for the doctors are that they should strive at fostering bonds of emotional attachment in their present patients so that they become strongly loyal and spread positive word-of-mouth which could result in the doctor getting new patients as well. Probable extensions of this research are also discussed later in the paper.