Organizational Support During Onsite Treatment in Patients’ Journey: A Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) Perspective

Individuals confronting potentially life-threatening health conditions at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) experience significant limitations in resources. This leads to a considerable dependence on external organizations and entities within their environment to overcome daily challenges. This reliance is particularly evident in crucial sectors like healthcare, where people look to organizations capable of offering comprehensive assistance while efficiently meeting essential service requirements at a reasonable cost. Consequently, the type of support provided by organizations becomes a crucial factor, especially during periods of heightened vulnerability, such as the rapid transition to the onsite treatment phase in the customer journey triggered by life-threatening health conditions.
The examination of the customer journey has predominantly adopted processual viewpoints, positing that customers traverse distinct phases—pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase—within service processes, collectively influencing customer experience and well-being. Existing service research has extensively explored aspects such as customer responses, dynamics of service satisfaction-failure-recovery, channels, technological disruptions, and co-creation across these phases. However, there exists a gap in the nuanced understanding of the broader purchase phase, wherein we assert that a BoP patient's transition to onsite treatment is akin to the 'purchase phase' in conventional customer journey literature. This phase is both preceded and succeeded by pre-treatment (pre-purchase) and post-treatment (post-purchase) phases, respectively. The inadequacy of research, especially concerning organizational support, is particularly pronounced in the context of BoP customers contending with life-threatening health conditions.
Addressing the research gap, two key questions guide the study: (a) What are the onsite treatment stages experienced by BoP customers in life-threatening health conditions? (b) How do service-providing organizations offer support to BoP customers during those onsite treatment stages of their journey?