Personality Traits and Customer-Oriented Behavior in the Health Tourism Hospitals in Malaysia

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between personality traits and customer-oriented behavior in the Malaysian health tourism hospitals. The respondents wereconsisted of nurses inthe 13 health tourism hospitals in Malaysia. Data were collected by using administered on-site questionnaires and the constructs of this study were developed from past researchers with tested validity and reliability.Multiple regressionswere employed to test the relationship between personality traits and customer- oriented behavior.The findings of this study revealed that openness to experience and conscientiousness were significantly and positively related to customer-oriented behavior. These findings may be of help to healthcare managers to select the right candidates for customer-oriented nurses. In the health tourism industry, health tourists are looking for abroad medical facilities not only with experienced and well-trained medical professionals but those that offer high standard of care. Standard of care is related to human perception and preference as how the healthcare services are to be provided. Generally, the healthcare service providers are facing challenges from a rapidly changing operating environment due to the increasing expectations especially onthe healthcare services. In the past, patients were focusing only on the technical dimension and outcome of the medicaltreatment but nowadays, patients are viewing healthcare services from different angles and perspectives. The increased expectation of service delivery is due to the rising consumer affluence and well-informed patients with regard to the standard of care. In light of the rising expectation of patient care, responding to patient needs in an efficient and effective manner is obviously a crucial leverage point to the health tourism hospitals. If the country health tourism would to attain a distinguished position by extending its customer base, health tourism hospitals should make significant leaps in their level of care delivery. In this context, customer-oriented behavior will certainly make a difference and betterment in terms of improving patients' overall experience in the hospitals. This paper discusses the importance of nurses' customer-oriented behavior which is critical to success in gaining patient'spreference and howpersonality traits can influence their customer-oriented behavior.