The idiosyncratic behaviour of service quality, value, satisfaction, and intention to recommend in higher education: An empirical examination

Abstract

Despite some dissenting voices, the marketisation of higher education in recent years has led to the need to consider how marketing concepts and business models that are central in traditional consumer markets can be applied in the educational context. One such concept that is held to be at the core of marketing is consumer value, which considers how consumers perceive the outcomes of their consumption experiences. Consequently, the functional relationships between service quality, value (disaggregated into the constituent dimensions of its give and get components), satisfaction and recommendation within the educational domain form the focus of this study. Service quality is treated as an antecedent of value, which in turn is a driver of satisfaction, the ultimate outcome of which is word of mouth recommendation. The idiosyncratic behaviour of the proposed functional relationships is tested in two cohorts of postgraduate students (MBA and specialist Masters). The data are analysed using Partial Least Squares. The impact of service quality on the formation of perceptions of value is confirmed for both cohorts. However, in relative terms the relationships are stronger for the specialist Masters cohort. At the same time, notable differences between the two cohorts are observed in the functional relationships between the dimensions of value and satisfaction. Although, collectively, the results are in line with extant value literature, they also indicate that contextual differences, even within a single domain, play an important role in the behaviour of the functional relationships.

Asociación entre calidad del servicio deportivo, valor y satisfacción de usuarios en España

“…Además de ello, las diferencias contextuales juegan un papel importante en el comportamiento de las relaciones funcionales (Ledden, Kalafatis, & Mathioudakis, 2011), por lo que también puede influir en el desfase encontrado el haber realizado los trabajos en países geográfica y culturalmente muy distantes (Brady et al, 2005;Huang et al, 2011;Nuviala et al, 2012a). Así mismo, el no encontrar relación directa no excluye que en el caso de incluir algún mediador pudiese aparecer relación indirecta (Forgas et al, 2012).…”

Factors influencing student satisfaction in universities in the Gulf region: does gender of students matter?

“…These market forces in the tertiary education sector have placed growing pressure on universities to adopt customeroriented business models borrowed from the commercial business world in order to compete effectively (Newman & Jahdi, 2009). While Ledden, Kalafatis, and Mathioudakis (2011) argue that multiple audiences and stakeholders (e.g. students, employers, alumni, society at large) may be identified; Yeo (2008) contends that higher education is progressively becoming a service with students targeted as prime customers.…”

Service Quality, Students' Satisfaction and Behavioural Intentions in STEM and IC Higher Education Institutions

“…Ledden, Kalafatis and Mathioudakis [3] studied the relationship between students'satisfaction and willingness of satisfied postgraduate students to recommend study programmes. Hasan [36] confirmed direct positive relationship between higher education SQ and SS.…”