The medical care is one of the service encounters. Patients evaluate the service quality based on the interaction with the physician. This research integrates the babyface and gender stereotypes into the model of service encounter. The research examines how these stereotypes affect people¡¦s perceptions and judgments, especially after a negative event occurs. The present study uses an experimental design to investigate the effects of the level of babyface (high vs. low), gender of physician (male vs. female) and the type of specialty (the surgical department vs. the internal medical department). A 2x2x2 factorial design is conducted. Eight different scenarios are established and the effects are measured by satisfaction and loyalty(the attitude toward the medical care). In addition, health consciousness is incorporated into this research to observe the responses under those scenarios.
The results indicate that the babyfaced physicians are more effective than the maturefaced physicians in terms of patient¡¦s satisfaction and loyalty. More importantly, the results demonstrate that in the babyfaced group, the male physicians are more effective than the female ones, but no such difference is found in the maturefaced physicians. After the negative even happened, due to the Teddy-bear effect arise, the female babyfaced physicians in the surgical department earned higher loyalty than male ones. On the other hand, the female maturefaced physicians in the internal medical department earn stronger loyalty from patients than male ones. Regarding the aspect of attribution in this study, the results show that the female maturefaced physicians are more likely to be perceived as frauds, and the female babyfaced physicians are more likely to be deemed to be responsible for such the negative event. When considering perceived severity of the negative event, people are more likely to attribute it to the male babyfaced physicians within the surgical department, and the female babyfaced physicians within the internal medical department. Overall speaking, the results suggest that stereotypes of babyface and gender exist in the service encounter with physicians.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0825111-002928 |
| Date | 25 August 2011 |
| Creators | Chen, I-ching |
| Contributors | Chun-tuan Chang, Yuh-chyi Wu, An-ling Chen, Yung-ming Shiu |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | Cholon |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0825111-002928 |
| Rights | user_define, Copyright information available at source archive |
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