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The aim of this chapter is to understand the nature of business collaboration between healthcare service providers and tourism agencies in Malaysia. Interviews with 17 healthcare service providers in Malaysia reveal that most of the collaboration between healthcare service providers and tourism agencies in Malaysia is informal or loose, despite their intention to leverage on medical tourism for business expansion. Close and tight collaborations are rare. The findings point towards the main reasons behind the rare collaboration which are the high customer orientation of healthcare service providers, the strategic move of business and support for government agenda.

The mental healthcare is experiencing an ever-growing surge in understanding the consumer (e.g., patient) engagement paradox, aiming to vouch for the quality of care. Despite this surge, scant attention has been given in academia to conceptualize and empirically investigate this particular aspect. Thus, drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) paradigm, the study explores how patients engage with healthcare service providers and how they perceive the quality of the healthcare services.

Data were collected from 279 respondents, and the derived conceptual model was tested by using Smart PLS 3.2.7 and PROCESS. To complement the findings of partial least squares (PLS)-based structural equation modeling (SEM), the present study also applied fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions to explore substitute conjunctive paths that emerge.

Findings show that patients’ perceived intimacy (PI), cohesion and privacy enhance the quality of mental healthcare service providers. The results also suggest that patients’ PI, cohesion and privacy have indirect effects on the perceived quality of care (PQC) by the service providers through consumer engagement. The fsQCA results derive that the relationship among conditions leading to patients’ perception of the quality of care in regard to mental healthcare service providers is complex and is best reflected as multiple and conjectural causation configurations.

The findings from this research contribute to the advancement of studies on patients’ experiences by empirically examining the unique dynamics of interaction between consumers (patients) and mental healthcare service providers, thereby enriching both the literature on social interactions and the understanding of the consumer–provider relationship.

The results of this study provide practical implications for mental healthcare service providers on how to combine the study variables to enhance the quality of care and satisfy more patients.

A significant research gap has ascertained the inter-relationship between PI, cohesion, privacy, engagement and PQC from the perspective of mental healthcare service providers. This research is one of the primary studies from a managerial and methodological standpoint. The study contributes by combining symmetric and asymmetric statistical tools in service marketing and healthcare research. Furthermore, the application of fsQCA helps to understand the interactions that might not be immediately obvious through traditional symmetric methods.

The study aims to address a critical gap in existing healthcare payment schemes and care service pricing by recognizing the influential role of patients' decisions on self-management efforts. These decisions not only impact health outcomes but also shape the demand for care, subsequently influencing care costs. Despite the significance of this interplay, current payment schemes often overlook these dynamics. The research focuses on investigating the implications of a novel behavior-based payment scheme, designed to align incentives and establish a direct connection between patients' decisions and care costs. The primary objective is to comprehensively understand whether and how this innovative payment scheme structure influences key stakeholders, including patients, care providers, insurers and overall social welfare.

In this paper, we propose a game-theoretical model to incorporate the performance of self-management with the demand for healthcare service, compare the patient's effort decision for self-management and provider's price decision for healthcare service under a behavior-based scheme with that under two implemented widely payment schemes, that is, co-payment scheme and co-insurance scheme.

Our findings confirm that the behavior-based scheme incentives patient self-management more than current schemes while reducing their possibility of seeking healthcare service, which indirectly induces the provider to lower the price of the service. The stakeholders' utility under various payment schemes is sensitive to the cost of treatment and the perceived health utility of patients. Especially, patient health awareness is not always benefited provider profit, as it motivates patient self-management while diminishing the demand for care.

We provide a novel framework for characterizing behavior-based payment schemes. Our results confirm the need for modification of the current payment scheme to incentivize patient self-management.

The purpose of this investigation is to gain insight into parents' perceptions of benefits vs burdens (value) of educational and healthcare service received for their child with ASD. Parents are the main integrators of long-term educational and healthcare service for their child with ASD.

Design/methodology/approach included (1) a sentiment analysis of discussion forum posts from an autism message board using a rule-based sentiment analysis tool that is specifically attuned to sentiments expressed in social media and (2) a qualitative content analysis of one-on-one interviews with parents of children diagnosed with ASD, complemented with interviews with experienced educators and clinicians.

Findings reveal the link between customized service integration and long-term benefits. Both parents and service providers emphasize the need to integrate healthcare and educational service to create holistic long-term care for a child with ASD. Parents highlight the benefits of varied services, but availability or cost are burdens if the service is not publicly provided, or covered by insurance. Service providers' lack of experience with ASD and people's ignorance of the challenges of ASD are burdens.

Ensuring health outcomes for a child with ASD requires an integrated service system and long-term, customer-centric service process because the scope of service covers the child's entire childhood. Customized educational and healthcare service must be allocated and budgeted early in order to reach the goal of a satisfactory service output for each child.

This is the first service research to focus on parents' challenges with obtaining services for their child with ASD. This paper provides service researchers and managers insight into parents' perceptions of educational and healthcare service value (i.e. benefits vs. burdens) received for their child with ASD. These insights into customer-centric perceptions of value may be useful to research and may help service providers to innovate and provide integrated service directly to parents, or indirectly to service providers, who serve children with ASD.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate patients’ views toward the perceived service quality of public and private healthcare service providers. Determinants of healthcare service quality were compared by carrying out a GAP analysis to equate perceived and expected services and examined differences in the service quality.

The study sample comprises 310 inpatients of public and private healthcare service providers. Self-administered questionnaires were used along a five-point Likert scale and analyzed through the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. GAP analysis was used to observe the difference between expectations and perceived service quality.

A cross-sectional study revealed significant quality gaps between the expected and perceived services of public and private healthcare service providers; conversely patients’ expectations are not fully met in both types of hospitals. Private hospitals surpassed in terms of overall perceived service quality from their counterparts. Perceived services were found better in terms of physician medical services in public sector hospitals, while rooms and housekeeping services were found better in terms of private sector hospitals.

The result can be used by both public and private healthcare service providers to restructure their quality management practices which could only be possible through effective management commitment, regular patients’ feedback and translucent complaint procedures.

The study conceptualizes the expected and perceived hospital service quality dimensions as an eight-dimensional framework. A comparison between public and private sector hospitals is made to get a better understanding about the differences in the perceived healthcare services among two sectors. Consequences of the study will aid hospital managers and policy makers to get a fuller picture of healthcare services in order to contrive enhancement practices.

Drawing on cultural intelligence and social exchange theories, this study examines cultural intelligence and its effects on proactive service performance and the mediating role of leader's collaborative nature and the moderating role of cultural training and emotional labor, particularly deep acting and surface acting, in the relationship between cultural intelligence and proactive service performance.

The study sample comprised 510 healthcare practitioners. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the hypotheses.

The results show that cultural intelligence positively influences proactive service performance. Additionally, leadership's collaborative nature influences proactive service performance. The moderating effect of cultural training and deep acting positively influences the relationship between cultural intelligence and proactive service performance. In contrast, surface acting reveals a reverse effect, thus exhibiting a positive effect on this relationship.

These findings suggest that public healthcare organizations should pay more attention in improving deep acting, cultural training and leadership's collaborative nature for optimal service performance.

The novelty of this study lies in its presentation of an integrated framework based on cultural intelligence and social exchange theories that can solve the contemporary challenges facing healthcare firms operating in emerging markets in integrating cultural intelligence and service performance.

The purpose of this review is to provide a conceptual framework of consumer engagement behavior in the value co-creation process of healthcare services, and further understand the current knowledge maps and advances.

Specifically, the scoping review methodology is used to synthesize the extant findings. The authors first develop the inclusion/exclusion criteria to evaluate the source material for the review; then, the authors further conduct the literature refinement to select the final data sample. As such, the authors extract and analyze the information derived from these articles.

The authors found most related studies focus on exploring patients' engagement behavior in the value co-creation process, especially those with chronic disease; the findings also reveal that consumers are most likely to engage in the value co-creation process of healthcare services by seeking or sharing health information; also, consumers engagement behavior is mainly driven by individual, interactive, and technological factors; moreover, consumer engagement in the value co-creation of healthcare services are more likely to achieve positive health and behavioral outcomes.

The role of consumers has gradually shifted from that of passive recipients to that of active participants in the healthcare value co-creation process. Consumer engagement behavior is the key premise for the realization of healthcare value co-creation, and it has received increasing attention both academically and practically. By unearthing the conceptual framework of consumer engagement behavior in the value co-creation process of healthcare services, this study provides a systematic understanding and serves as a useful resource for future research and practice.

This paper explores the enablers of modular healthcare services.

A survey-based approach was adopted with specialised hospitals as the unit of analysis. A structural model was developed based on a literature review and assessed using a cross-sectional research design. A 23-indicator questionnaire was circulated among service providers in the healthcare system across India, and 286 valid responses were received. The data were analysed using partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results reveal that professional competence, technological versatility, clear division of tasks, channelised flow of information and professional autonomy act as enablers that may drive modular service delivery.

By examining service providers' perspectives, this paper highlights the influence of the identified enablers on modular service delivery in healthcare organisations.

For practitioners, the study provides suggestions for designing patient-centric healthcare services via modular healthcare delivery. The identified structural relationships can facilitate immediate corrective actions and the formulation of future policies. The findings will help practitioners foresee opportunities for patient participation in value co-creation, meet patients' varying needs, decompose service offerings, mix and match components develop sets of rules as interfaces between service modules and design service packages on an ongoing basis.

This study underscores the emergence of patient-centric care and may aid the design of processes that deliver health to the patient as a person.

This paper identifies and empirically validates relationships between healthcare service delivery processes and modular service delivery.

Transformative service research (TSR) has received considerable attention from researchers and marketers in recent years and becomes a research priority in health care. In response, this paper adapts the TSR entities and wellbeing framework to systematically review healthcare quality research on Muslim consumers. The purpose of this paper is to identify research gaps and provide directions for future research, aligning healthcare studies with the TSR framework.

The authors of this paper reviewed empirical papers in healthcare quality research on Muslim patients between the years 2000 and 2020. The recorded journal articles were synthesized using insights from the TSR framework. Several literature gaps were identified and future research directions were provided using the TCCM framework, in which T stands for theory, C for context, C for characteristics and M for methodology.

This paper finds studies that encompass several domains of the TSR framework including cultural and religious dimensions, service interaction and customer engagement dimensions and customer service wellbeing. Findings also reveal subject matters related to the TSR framework, which receive less attention in the healthcare literature. A number of potential avenues for theoretical extension in health care are also discussed.

The implications of this paper are highly relevant to Muslim healthcare consumers, the healthcare system and society in general. The findings suggest inspiring changes in the healthcare ecosystem that yields a greater quality of life (health and wellbeing) for individuals and their respective communities.

This paper advances the current state of healthcare research by identifying and organizing components of TSR entities and wellbeing framework, using Muslim patients as the context. It enhances some pioneering approaches within the domain of TSR and quality dynamics and provides a holistic perspective as guidance and systematic thinking to further advancement in the field of services marketing and Islamic marketing.

The purpose is to analyse the influence of inertia and group conformity on loyalty in healthcare.

Structural equation model developed from the literature and tested with cross-sectional data from a patient online survey.

Inertia is a significant antecedent of loyalty and has a stronger effect in healthcare than in other service sectors. Group conformity has no significant effect in healthcare.

The strength of the impact of inertia [group conformity] on loyalty depends on the importance of the customer need that the service industry satisfies, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Where inertia (stability need) is equally or more [less] important than the customer need, the influence of inertia on loyalty should be positive and strong [weak or insignificant]. In services that satisfy needs more [equally or less] important than group conformity (belonging need), there may be an insignificant [significant] influence of group conformity on customer loyalty, even [especially] in credence services.

Healthcare providers can exploit the stronger effect of inertia in healthcare through development of inertia-based loyalty policies. Regulatory authorities should be vigilant to ensure that these policies are not detrimental to patients. ‘Inert’ patients must become responsible for assessing their loyalties. Authorities and reference groups must stimulate customer loyalty assessments, and assist by providing impartial information.

This is the first study to address the influence of inertia and group conformity on loyalty in the healthcare sector and, from the perspective of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it is the first to do so in any service sector.