Assessing the relationship between service quality, satisfaction and loyalty: the Vietnamese higher education experience

Abstract

Purpose Service quality has been widely recognized as the core value of any higher education institution (HEIs), especially in the context of higher education reform in Vietnam. The paper aims to assess the student’s perceived service quality using SERVPERF scale and to find the relations between perceived service quality, satisfaction and loyalty in one public university in Vietnam. Design/methodology/approach The self-structured questionnaire using SERVPERF scale was administered to 350 students currently attending full-time courses at the university. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to certify the elementary factors. The regression models were applied to determine the relationship between service quality, student satisfaction and student loyalty. Findings The findings revealed the significant relationships between student perceived service quality with satisfaction and loyalty. However, this relationship is mediated by student satisfaction. Research limitations/implications The study is limited to public university education service and examined the perspective of student as “primary customer”; therefore, generalizing the results to other service industries and other role of student as stakeholder or citizen should be used with caution. Practical implications The SERVPERF scale could be delivered regularly to get the student’s perception on the HEIs performance. The results should be taken for purpose of continuing quality improvement to enhance the satisfaction and loyalty, particularly in the context of highly competitive environment and university autonomous in Vietnam. Originality/value This is believed to be the first study in Vietnam with sufficient evidence to support the concept that service quality positively related to students’ satisfaction and loyalty and satisfaction as mediating factor.

Fostering Customer Loyalty in Kitesurfing: The Case of a Nautical Sports Centre in Portugal

“…The direct influence of satisfaction on behavioural intention was another finding obtained in this study (B = 1.208), corroborating several studies carried out in the fields of sports [3], nautical tourism [32,56], and even education [42,46]. The results also reveal the direct effect of the responsiveness dimension on behavioural intention (B = 0.656), in line with some studies [43,62,63], showing the direct effect of service quality dimensions.…”

“…Similarly, in the context of sports events and organisations, authors such as Nuviala et al [3] and Hyun and Jordan [41] argue that service quality is a significant predictor of customer satisfaction. In turn, linked to the education sector, the company's main business area under study, several authors explain that perceived quality positively influences student satisfaction [31,[42][43][44][45][46]. Apropos of this, Mansori et al [44] also explain that several dimensions of service quality (e.g., empathy, responsibility, and tangibility) are strongly related to student satisfaction.…”

“…Most studies related to sports organisations, nautical tourism, and education often resort to the concept of customer behavioural intention, to the detriment of the concept of loyalty, except for some works [31,43], which show the influence of satisfaction on customer loyalty. Indeed, many studies have confirmed the significant influence of satisfaction on the customer's behavioural intention, namely, on their intentions to repurchase and recommend the place, not only in the nautical tourism segment [4][5][6]40,54,55], but also in the field of sports in general [3,31,41,56,57].…”

“…In services, some studies recognised the indirect effect of service quality on behavioural intention, mediated by the satisfaction variable [41,46], and a variety of works have even shown that service quality directly influences customer behavioural intention [59][60][61]. In turn, some researchers have also revealed the existence of significant correlations and significant direct effects between the perceived quality and the customer's behavioural intention, in the nautical tourism segment [62], in the domain of sports [63] and education [42,43,45]. In this area, it is worth mentioning a study carried out by Mansori et al [44], where the five dimensions of the SERVQUAL model were applied, revealing that the dimensions of tangibility and empathy had a high influence on behavioural intention.…”