The glory of stories: Using critical incidents to understand service evaluation in the primary healthcare context

This paper reports the results of a research project into the determinants of consumer evaluation of services. The research uses the healthcare context to explore consumer perceptions of the service product dimensions. Using a critical incident technique, a consumer‐derived model of the relationships between core and peripheral aspects of the service is presented. The results indicate that evaluation is a function of both personal and organizational factors which comprise core and peripheral components of the service.