Value, of course is what every marketer should be all about. The marketers who figure out how to add value will thrive even in these rough times. The ones who treat value as a jargon of the age may end up wishing they had never heard of value marketing (Business Week, November 11 1991).

The objective of this study was to empirically test a model of relationships among service quality, satisfaction and selected behavioural outcomes. Particular attention was paid to delineating the cognitive aspects of the service provider‐consumer relationship from the affective, emotive factors. Using doctor‐patient relationships in Turkey as the study setting, results of a LISREL analysis suggest that the affective aspects of satisfaction have more impact than cognitive factors on patients’ propensity to continue the relationship. The most critical managerial implication of the study findings is that doctors need to place more emphasis on the functional (how it is done) aspects of care giving than the technical (what is done) ones.

Reports on the results and managerial implications of a Turkish study which investigated relationships between service quality, and customer satisfaction, complaint behaviour and commitment. Concludes that the ultimate success of any service quality programme implemented by a bank can only be gauged by creation and retention of satisfied customers. The role of customer‐contact personnel in the attainment of these goals is of paramount importance. Therefore, in their efforts to deliver high quality services to their external publics (i.e. clients), banks should not ignore the specific needs of their internal publics, notably their customer‐contact employees.

This paper seeks to investigate the reasons why, in an increasingly competitive health care milieu, patients choose certain hospitals over others. It introduces the modified importance‐performance analysis technique and presents the method and findings of an empirical study which applied importance‐performance analysis in a health care setting. The strategies derived from the study findings are discussed.

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