How hospital brand image intervene the impact of marketing mix on patient loyalty

Modern hospitals slowly have left their main purpose as public service facility and have moved to business orientation. For that reason, they always had to enhance the professionalism as well as continuously innovate in order to win business competition as well as to earn maximum profit. Previous researches provided results on impact of marketing mix to customer’s loyalty. However, the impact of marketing mix particularly on patient loyalty to hospital, whether directly or mediated by hospital brand image, was still under observed. The purpose of this research was to investigate how far does marketing mix may enhance the loyalty of patient’s in a hospital as mediated by brand image of the hospital. Five mixes were chosen namely product, people, price, place, and promotion. Data in the form of questionnaire were collected from 195 recurring patient of outpatient department in a profit oriented company managed hospital in Jakarta. The data was then processed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The result of this research showed that marketing mix brought significant impact to hospital image while hospital image significantly impacted patient loyalty. Hospital image was able to be significant intervening variable between marketing mix and patient loyalty.