Key Determinants of Satisfaction among International Business Students in Regional Context

Abstract

Student satisfaction has been one of the core factors in retaining and attracting international business students to educational institutions. The ability to know the level of students' satisfaction and the factors affecting it can add a competitive advantage and is considered an opportunity to act proactively in education business. While this information has substantial impact on institutional marketing strategies, there is a dearth of information about the level of satisfaction of business students in Northern Ontario, a vast geographical area representing only a small percentage of the Canadian population. This study aims to fill the gap in existing knowledge about international business students in a regional context. The study addresses the following questions: 1)What is the level of satisfaction of international business students studying in this northern Ontario region? 2)What are the perceived factors that affect the level of satisfaction of international business students in the region? Data were collected from international business students at Laurentian University using the Service Quality Model (SERVQUAL) to develop the conceptual framework guide. The model provided an explanation for the relation between the quality of service and customer expectations. The results of this study showed a satisfaction level that was lower than expected for international business students. This was evident particularly for females who had taken fewer courses with limited work experience and for graduate students. However, students-especially females-with more work experience were more satisfied. The findings lead to a number of implications for future research related to the formulation of curriculum and administrative policy.

Accountants’ satisfaction following unification of Canadian accounting bodies

“…An examination of demographic factors found that gender neither influences satisfaction nor the general perception of the legacy accountants. This result contrasts with previous studies in other industries (Maceli et al, 2011;Qian and Lim, 2008;Sabharwal and Corley, 2009;Yasin and Bélanger, 2015), which noted significant differences in satisfaction between men and women. Moreover, our study showed that age, education employment sector were not associated with satisfaction or with the branding and professional identity perception of the legacy accountants.…”

“…Part 1 of the questionnaire consisted of eight items designed to collect relevant demographic data, namely, age, gender, designation(s), number of years designated, level of education, employment sector, work experience and income level. Previous studies in various industry sectors have shown that many of these types of demographic data are Canadian accounting bodies correlated with satisfaction (Akbari and Darabi, 2014;Gogos et al, 2015;Yasin and Bélanger, 2015). Part 2 consisted of 15 items designed to factor in one answer for pre-unification expectation and one for post-unification experience with service performance by using a seven-point Likert scale format, whereby 1 represented "strongly disagree," 4 represented "neither agree nor disagree" and 7 represented "strongly agree."…”

“…The refined SERVQUAL model (Jahandideh et al, 2013;Parasuraman et al, 1988Parasuraman et al, , 1991Yasin and Bélanger, 2015) quantifies the gap between members' expectations and perception (experience) of service performance of the CPAO along five dimensions:…”

Influence of Online Reviews on Student Satisfaction Seen through a Service Quality Model

“…Student satisfaction is a critical factor that impacts on many industries directly or indirectly, such as education and food industries. Students aim to select a prestigious and suitable university to spend some of the important years of their life, and student satisfaction is significant in improving the reputation of a university and in expanding its drawing power [57].…”

Relationship between Student Expectations, Perceptions, and Personal Characteristics in Integrated Technical Courses

“…Various researchers have used the Servqual scale to investigate service quality in educational institutions across the countries, including the USA, France (Foropon et al, 2013), Turkey (İncesu & Aşıkgil, 2012), Canada (Yasin & Bélanger, 2015), Morocco (Goumairi & Ben Souda, 2020), Iran (Asefi et al, 2017), Bangladesh (Mamun-ur-Rashid, 2023), Colombia (Vergara-Schmalbach & Quesada-Ibargüen, 2011), and Brazil (Lourenço & Knop, 2011).…”