American Journal of Marketing Research Vol. 1, No. 3, 2015, pp. 158-166 http://www.aiscience.org/journal/ajmr * Corresponding author E-mail address: tsaththi@yahoo.com (T. Sathiyaseelan), athulatmsusl@gmail.com (W. K. A. C. Gnanapala) Service Quality and Patients’ Satisfaction on Ayurvedic Health Services Thambirasa Sathiyaseelan 1 , W. K. Athula C. Gnanapala 2, * 1 Ayurveda Teaching Hospital, Kaithady, Jaffna, Sri Lanka 2 Dept. of Tourism Management, Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka, Belihuloya, Sri Lanka Abstract Ayurveda is one of the oldest and famous natural health care systems mostly practicing in south Asian region. It is originated in India and has developed in different countries through religious and cultural background of the local society. The main purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the service quality on patient satisfaction in the government Ayurvedic medical institutions in Jaffna district. The study is carried out as a questionnaire survey and used purposive non random sampling method to collect data from 591 respondents. The five dimensional SERVQUAL model proposed by Parasuraman et al. (1985) was employed to measure the service quality dimensions related to the Ayurvedic hospitals. Descriptive statistics and regression analysis were mainly employed to analyze the data. The results show that the service quality of the Ayurvedic medical institutions contribute significantly to the patients satisfaction. However, the patients’ satisfaction is not significantly influenced by tangible dimension and other dimensions i.e. reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy statistically and significantly enhance the patients’ satisfactions. It is necessary to improve the overall service quality of the Ayurvedic medical institutions in order to enhance the patients satisfaction who trust and take medicine from the government Ayurvedic institutions. Keywords Patient Satisfaction, Service Quality, Ayurvedic Medical Institutions, Patients' Satisfaction Received: July 1, 2015 / Accepted: July 26, 2015 / Published online: August 5, 2015 @ 2015 The Authors. Published by American Institute of Science. This Open Access article is under the CC BY-NC license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 1. Introduction Ayurvedic health system is one of the oldest, natural health care systems, originated in India. It has been developed within religious and cultural context of the society. In the early era, this system was widely practiced in the South Asian region including Sri Lanka (Wanninayaka, 1982). However, during the colonization period, the foreign rulers supported and gave priorities to the Allopathic system of medicine, and at the same time discouraged the development of Ayurvedic health care system. As a result, Ayurvedic system lost their popularity and gradually the Allopathic system was developed very rapidly (Silva, 1999). According to Sivasanmugarajah (2000) the Ayurvedicmedical treatments have been practiced in Jaffna even from the kings up to the present. The concepts and the treatment techniques of Ayurveda has been developed and modified as per the changes in the cultural, social and economic stages of Jaffna. At present, in comparison with the last two decades, Ayurveda has lost its place in the service to the western health care demand (Kushmararatna, 2005). Several reasons can be attributed for the loss of its place in the society. The main reason for the loss of its place is the failure in gaining the patients’ satisfaction. Patients’ satisfaction generally depends on several reasons. Modern literature states that the patients’ satisfaction has a positive relationship with quality of service (Zineldin, 2006). The competitive challenges of businesses have been given an important place for the service quality and the service quality greatly affect for the customers’ satisfaction. Also, it leads to