By Zeithaml and Bitner (2003), service quality (SQ) was defined as a targeted measurement that reflected the customer's perception of certain dimensions of services provided. The particular perception towards the dimensions of services was influenced by several factors which included the quality of the services received, the quality of the product, the price factor as well as both situational and personal factor.
Student Satisfaction:
For the past 30 years ending 2011, customer satisfaction has been an intensively discussion topic in terms of consumer and marketing research. By Wilkie (1990) and Perkins (1991), there have been over 1200 articles published about customer satisfaction research. The number of the articles published should be increased two or three times by now since the topic itself has managed to get greater extent of attention from scholars all over the world. In this study, the customer satisfaction mentioned directly to student satisfaction as students are considered as customers of the higher learning institutions. For this study, customer refers to institution students (MIS students); therefore, student's satisfaction towards services offered by MIS has become the one of the target point of the study.
According to McDougall and Levesque (2000), they defined customer satisfaction as "a cognitive or affective reaction that emerges in response to a single or prolonged set of service encounters." Customer satisfaction can be a multi-dimensional construct (Hu, Jay & Thanika, 2009; Bitner and Hubbert, 1994; Price, Arnould & Tierney, 1995; Sureshchandar et.al., 2002) or a one-dimensional construct (Cronin & Taylor, 1992). Disregarding for how customer satisfaction is measured, it is demonstrated that a satisfied customer will manifest their loyalty and give away positive word of mouth as per reported by Kim, Lee and Yoo (2006). Machleit and Mantel (2001) described customer satisfaction like the heart of all marketing actions and there is no wonder that customer satisfaction has been recognized as one of the most important determinants leading to customer loyalty. Regarding to the researcher's study with the above literature review, student's satisfaction will create positive word of mouth. Moreover, the satisfaction is going to contribute to create the student loyalty.
In case of higher learning institutions, the student satisfactions play an important role in determining the originality and accuracy of the education system. The situation is the higher the level of satisfaction experienced by the student, the better the student's ability to groom their skill development, course knowledge and mentality (Muhammad et al., 2010).
Zeithaml (1988) mentioned that the student satisfaction is an affirmation to measure how well effective an institution administrates itself as well as its educational system. Rodie and Klein (2000) admitted that if an institution occupied necessary educational facilities with affective teaching and training staff, the student will most likely be more stimulated, loyal and perform well in their academic.
Another point of view from Kotler and Clarke (1987), they defined satisfaction as a status felt by a person who has experienced the performance or a result that met his or her expectation. The expectation might go as far as before the students entered the higher education, suggesting that it was important to the researcher to firstly determine what the students expected before entering the higher education institutions (Palacio, Meneses and Perez, 2002). Conversely, Carey, Cambiano and De Vore (2002) thought that satisfaction actually covered problems of students' perception and experiences during their college years.
Hom, (2002) stated that most of the student satisfaction study focused on the perspective of customer, so researcher confronted an issue of making a standard definition for student satisfaction. For this reason, customer satisfaction theory was chosen and justified to illustrate the meaning of student satisfaction. By William, (2002) even though it is risky to view students as customers, in the current atmosphere of higher education market; there is a new ethical exception for students have become "customer". Students were tuition fee payers. Accordingly, their view should be heard and acted upon.
Relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction:
Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Bery (1994) mentioned the significant discussion and disagreement on the view of the relation between customer satisfaction and service quality, although noting little debate over the fact that they are closely associated. Carman (1990) and Parasuraman, et al. (1988) differentiated between the two based on the level at which they are assessed: customer satisfaction is a transaction-specific evaluation whereas service quality is a global evaluation. On this foundation, they stated that an accession of transaction specific assessments towards to a global assessment. In the other words, cumulative satisfying experiences lead to an assessment of quality in service.
Another opinion of Gold (2001), students is the basic customers of the academic institutions and should be assessed for the quality. Athiyaman (1997) turned to conclusion that there is positive and momentous relationship between quality of services presented and customer satisfaction. Ahmed et al. (2010) also found that provision of quality services is considerably related with customer satisfaction. As Spreng & Singh (1993) stated "Satisfaction is emotional reaction to a product or service experience". While looking at the causes of satisfaction it has been noticed that Satisfaction is a result of quality service (Shemwell et al. 1998, Cronin & Taylor, 1992 & Bolton & Drew, 1991). In the discussion about the customer (students) criteria for selection of academic institution, Veloutsou et al. (2004) found out that students employed quality as the primary criteria to choose and institute for admission and education. Additionally, Low (2000) also concluded that provision of better quality services is key source of lure, satisfy and retain students, which in result have direct bearing on financial resources, security of job and viability of educational institution.
Churchill and Suprenant (1982) posited that satisfaction is associated to the size and the direction of the disconfirmation experience. In their model, they define disconfirmation as the difference between prior expectations and actual performance. Thus, in higher education, when a student gets low expectations and the actual performance goes over those expectations, satisfaction is high. In contrary, when a student gets high expectations and actual performance is lower than expected, satisfaction is very low. In the situations where expectations and performance match, satisfaction reached the average. Conant, Brown, and Mokwa (1985) also advised that satisfaction was highest for student with lower initial expectations.
Perception of Service Quality
What Customers Perceive Service Provider Actually Offered
Expectation of
Service Experience
What Customers
Believe the Service
Provider Should Offer
Service
Quality
Gupta & Chen (1995) defined a framework for measuring service quality whereby it is defined as the gap between customer expectations versus their perceptions of how the service is performed. The goal of any service organization is to close, or narrow, the gap.
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Studies into student satisfaction have come not from the service quality perspective, but from the study of student endurance and recruitment. In 1983, Hawes and Glisan proposed that student concern in the 1960s, decreasing growth rate since the 1970s, and the budgetary issues facing almost universities had created a big deal of interest in a marketing approach to the administration of universities. Johnson (1987), talking particularly about home economics programs and extensively about all the programs, claimed that the survival of some college and university programs may depend on their ability to recruit students.
By Bemoski (1991), he referred that colleges and universities have been unconsidered in asking what society wants from them in terms of skills and abilities to be conveyed to students and that they must know what it is that students want from their educational experience. From another author, Hampton (1983) stated that "today it is necessary to view students as consumers of education services, with specific needs and wants, and demanding corresponding levels of satisfaction"(p.170).
Gielow and Lee (1988) considered the leave of a student from an institution as an obvious signal of their dissatisfaction," voting with one's feet." Although, they made it clear there may interfere factors in attrition, they insisted on the significance of student satisfaction: although an affective measure, it may be argued that student satisfaction is one of the most direct tests of post secondary success... Given that individual students are the primary beneficiaries of the college experience, asking them how satisfied they are with those experiences is an obvious way to measure this success. Student satisfaction is also an educational result over which post secondary institutions have considerable influence.
Conant, Brown, and Mokwa (1985) made the view point that the study of student satisfaction has been a neglected topic in institutional planning and that it is a critical step in marketing and marketing orientation. Hampton (1983) emphasized that the key to attracting new students is in understanding the current satisfied student.
A study by Shim and Morgan (1990) examined the effects of several determinants on student's attitudes approaching their majors and satisfaction with their majors/departments. They found two factors to be most important among those students highly satisfied: they perceived course offerings as interesting and useful, and they tended to be satisfied with the university overall. Shim and Morgan recommended paying close attention to course and curricular evaluations by students to meet their needs for interesting and useful courses. As pointed out, general satisfaction with the university overall was the second most important predictor for satisfaction with one's major/department. However, from their research, it was not clear what factors affect satisfaction with a university. They recommended further investigation of factors which might affect over all university satisfaction such as academic standards, geographic location, tuition costs and financial aid, quality of faculty, social atmosphere, and career service. In this study, the researcher will use questionnaire to investigate some of the factors which they recommended.
Schmidt, Debevec, and Comm (1987), in their study of graduating students and those students's evaluation of satisfaction with their college, found that the most important factors were the quality of instruction and the faculty, the academic standards, and the college's helpfulness in finding employment after graduation. Hamash, Glezer and Meyer (1991) surveyed 2072 respondents in 176 courses from four departments in a community college. The major factor in course satisfaction was the teacher.
Chadwick and Ward (1987) gave away their view that the most important predictor of seniors' willingness to recommend the school to others was the value of their degree on the job market. Following, in order of importance, were quality of instruction and interaction with the faculty, skills learned in job communication effectiveness of the placement office, and helpfulness of the advisor. Hartley and Berkowitz (1983) reported that satisfied alumni were more likely to contribute financially and to recommend the school to others.
Service quality in education:
Service quality concept was based on a customer-oriented perspective, measuring the level of customer's satisfaction with the services offered by an organization. Berry (1995) debated that service quality took a vital role and could positively affect an organization. Education service quality was an approach to quality of education as a kind of service quality. Schools are the service suppliers, and students are the customers. Therefore, the school should consider the students as the customers, and would value their needs. Schools should constantly improve the quality of education (for example, school equipment, the effectiveness of school administration, teaching quality, etc.) and establishing a culture of good education. Parasuraman et al. (1988) noted that essentially, it was the number of positive and negative service features in process of interaction between the service providers and the customers. Parasuraman et al. (1998) suggested a SERVQUAL scale and identified five essential aspects of quality: tangibility, reliability, responsibility, assurance and empathy.
These aspects were employed to define the assessment standard, and created an effective measurement tool for evaluating service quality. Markovic (2006) found that SERVQUAL was a reliable scale, and also that this scale was applicable to the management of higher education, and that it could be successfully used to measure service quality in higher education (Seymour, 1992; Hampton, 1992; Ruby, 1996; Waugh, 2002). Each aspect of service quality should be evaluated using customers attitudes. Kerlin (2000) applied the five aspects of service quality of the SERVQUAL scale to evaluate student satisfaction with services provided in universities, finding that students place less value on service reliability than they do on tangibility.
Service Quality Measurement
The most notable contribution towards the measurement of quality of a given service is by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1985). Their Service Quality (SERVQUAL) model is a multiple item of scale which constructed to measure customer perceptions of service quality in service and retail industries (Parasuraman et.al., 1988). At least 293 important articles have been written from 1976 to 1995 on service quality and if considered article in which service quality forms a part of the published articles, the number would be more than 4000 articles (Philip & Hazlett, 1997). These numbers clearly shows the importance of service quality and the researcher's attentions to the topic.
The initial SERVQUAL model by Parasuraman (1985) consists of ten dimensions namely:
Reliability: How well does the service being delivered as promised
Responsiveness: How fast does the response be given to customers?
Competence: How well does the service provider possesses the knowledge and skill needed to serve the customers
Access: How convenient are customers able to access the service provider
Courtesy: How approachable does the staff of the service provider
Communication: How well does the service provider kept the customers informed
Credibility: How well does the service provider can be trusted
Security: How well does the service provider protect the privacy of customers?
Understanding of customer: How well does the service provider make its effort to understand the needs and wants of the customer?
Tangible: How well does the service provider equipped with tangible facilities to serve the customer.
Parasuraman and Berry (1991) later condensed the ten dimensions of service quality (SQ) into five dimensions which consist of 22 attributes. The newly condensed five dimensions of SQ are as follows:
Tangibles: The physical facilities, equipment that is needed to provide services
Reliability: The ability to deliver the desired service dependably, accurately and consistently.
Responsiveness: The ability to response to customers request on time
Assurance: The ability to convey trust and confidence to customers toward the services provided
Empathy: The ability to show personal caring and attention to customers.
The SERVQUAL instrument has demonstrated excellent validity and reliability in previous research (Babakus & Boller, 1992; Bolton & Drew, 1991; Cronin & Taylor, 1992). It is applicable to various industries, for example, the adaptation of the instruments in the professional service industries (Freeman & Dart, 1993), health care (Lam, 1997), and tourism (Tribe & Snaith, 1998). The evidence suggests that SERQUAL instrument can be applied to measure the service quality in education industry.
Responsiveness as a Component of Service Quality:
Queuing time is a worry for many service companies, because customer waiting time would create a negative influence on the service perception of customers. Time has value for both buyer and seller. Additionally, service companies might lose the transactions if the waiting time is so long. Especially, customers considered their waiting time as a sacrifice to receive the service. That is the reason that more and more customer service companies which focused on offering a short time for their service as an advantage. Lovelock and Gummesson (2004) emphasized on the important role of time in service industry and recommend service companies to pay more effort in enhancing the understanding of how their customer perceived the value of time.
The waiting time had four aspects: objective, subjective, cognitive and affective:
1. The objective of waiting time is the passed time when measured by a digital match by customers before they were served (Davis and Vollman, 1990; Katz et al., 1991; Taylor and Shirley, 1994)
2. The subjective waiting time is the estimation of customer for their waiting time. In some prior researcher studies, the subjective aspect was assessed by means of the perception of waiting time (Hui and Tse, 1996; Pruyn and Smidts, 1998). There was no surprise that the time estimation relied on objectively measured passed time (Hornick, 1984; Pruyn and Smidts, 1998; Antonides et al., 2002).
3. The cognitive aspect of waiting time is the customer's evaluation of whether the waiting time is acceptable, reasonable or tolerable (Durrande-Moreau, 1999) as well as examined the short waiting time and the long waiting time (Pruyn and Smidts, 1998).
4. The affective aspect of waiting time included the emotional responses to waiting such as irritation, boredom, frustration, stress, pleasure, happiness, etc … (Taylor, 1994; Hui and Tse, 1996; Pruyn and Smidts, 1998). By Pruyn and Smidts (1998), these affective and cognitive aspects took form of the wait appraisal. Together with income and price, time could be considered as force in consumer buying choice (Becker, 1965). When choosing a service provider, consumers consider carefully the benefit against money, effort and psychological cost of buying and using the service. The authors considered the satisfaction about waiting time and the satisfaction about service were two constructions related to a specific transaction.
The satisfaction in service was the overall assessment of the service transaction and waiting time satisfaction was a determinant of the latter. Several studies shown that delay has created negative effect on the overall service measurement (Katz et al., 1991; Taylor, 1994; Hui and Tse, 1996). Moreover, by Pruyn and Smidts (1998), delay also has negative effect on the satisfaction with the service more precisely. Customer's anger and their evaluation of punctuality affected the overall performance of service (Taylor, 1994).
Equivalently, Hui and Tse (1996) found that the affective responses to the waiting influenced the evaluation of the company's service. Pruyn and Smidts (1998) also demonstrated that the waiting appraisal such as cognitive and affective dimensions positively influenced the satisfaction towards the service. There was another element of responsiveness in handling the customer's complaint. A main reason of customer switching service provider was customer unsatisfied with the problem settlement (Hart et al., 1990). In the opinion of Hirchman (1970), when customer met an issue, they might respond by egress (going to another new supplier) voicing (trying to remedy the problem by giving complaint) or loyalty (keep staying with the supplier and anticipate that "things will be getting better"). It was given that customer in banking industry had relatively high switching costs; it was possibly that a dissatisfaction experience would create a passive reaction (no complaint) or a complaint. Therefore, the bank's response could lead to customer thought range from dissatisfaction to satisfaction. In point of fact, the evidence suggested that when the service provider accepted their responsibility and trying to solve the problem. The customer would become "bonded" to their organization (Hart et al., 1990). When customers complained, they gave the company a chance to fix the issue and interestingly, if the firm was able to do it successfully. The firm would increase the customer loyalty, hence increasing the profit (Fornell and Wernerfelt, 1987). Handling customer complaint well can make a positive influence on customer satisfaction and retention.
Assurance as a Component of Service Quality:
According to Callaghan et al., (1995), the definition of assurance is a promise that will definitely happen or be true about the other party's intention in the relationship. In the area of relationship marketing, assurance has been associated to trust and was defined as the dimension of business's relationship which determined the level to which each party felt they can depend on the integrity of the promise given by the other.
Assurance is popularly accepted and was a basis for relationships (Sullivan and Peterson, 1982; Crosby et al., 1990; Grönroos, 1990; Andaleeb, 1992; Houston et al., 1992; Moorman et al., 1992). It has been documented in the form of an exchange relationship (Grönroos, 1990). According to Moorman et al., (1992); Martin and Sohi, (1993), it has considered as a crucial element in the relationship of business. And by Morgan and Hunt, (1994), assurance has identified as a key development in modeling relationship marketing.
It is a widely accepted basis for relationships (Sullivan and Peterson, 1982; Crosby et al., 1990; Grönroos, 1990; Andaleeb, 1992; Houston et al., 1992; Moorman et al., 1992). It has been documented in the form of an exchange relationship (Grönroos, 1990), considered by some (Moorman et al., 1992; Martin and Sohi, 1993) as a critical component of business relationships, and identified as a key construct in modeling relationship marketing (Morgan and Hunt, 1994).
In the other point of view, Morgan and Hunt's (1994) thought that trust would be existed when a party had confidence about their partner's reliability and integrity. In fact, trust could exist at the level of each individual (Rotter, 1967) or at the firm level (Moorman et al., 1993). Additionally, trust could be conceptualized as a dimension of service quality and trust could also be thought of as "trust in the service itself" (Parasuraman et al., 1985, 1988).
Tangibility as a Component of Service Quality:
Tangibility brought up the physical proof of the service. Tangibility comprised the physical facilities, look of personnel, tools or equipments, physical presentation of the service, and different customers within the service facility (Parasuraman et al., 1985).
Empathy as a Component of Service Quality:
Empathy referred to the dimension of a business relationship that enabled the two parties to see the situation from the other's perspective. It is defined as making an attempt to understand somebody else's wishes and goals. Empathy involved in the ability of individual parties to see the situation from the other party's perspective in a really cognitive sense (Hwang, 1987). The empathy dimension took a major role in Chinese business relationships (Hwang, 1987; Brunner et al., 1989) and it was obviously needed in western business relationships as well (Ferguson, 1990; Houston et al., 1992). This showed that empathy was a vital element to build up a positive relationship between two parties.
Reliability as a Component of Service Quality:
Service reliability means consistently in offering the service trustworthily and precisely. According to Berry et al. (1990), service reliability is the core of the service to most customers and managers should use every opportunity to make a "do-it-right-first" angle. Specifically, managers are encouraged to include reliability issues in their mission statements, set reliability standards, teach the importance of reliability in training programs, appoint reliability teams to study specific services and recommend ways to improve reliability, measure error rates and reward error-free service.
Student Loyalty:
The client loyalty is manifested in several ways including a commitment to repurchase or patronizes a preferred product or service (Oliver, 1997; Reichheld and Sasser, 1990; Dick and Basu, 1994).Student loyalty had both short term and long term impact on the educational institution. Loyal students have been influencing teaching quality positively through their active participation and their committed behavior (Rodie and Kleine, 2000). Probably they are good supporters, recommending the institution to others. Besides that, an increasing number of former students are returning to higher educational institutions in order to update their knowledge (Marzo-Navarro et al., 2005).
Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty:
Keeping customer satisfied leaded to customer loyalty. Jones and Sasser Jr, (1995), stated after examine thirty two completely different organizations with five different markets that the relationship between loyalty and satisfaction is linear. It means that when the satisfaction raised the loyalty raised too. A higher customer satisfaction leaded to number of improvements like higher customer loyalty, higher consumption of the service, acquisition of further customers.
Customer loyalty is meant to be absolutely associated to customer satisfaction and to the performance of a business unit (Kotler and Fox, 1995; Zeithaml, 2000; Helgesen, 2006). This link between customer satisfaction and the performance (profitability) of a business unit forms the cornerstone of the marketing concept (Drucker, 1954; Gronroos, 1989).
Student satisfaction is supposed to be positively linked to student loyalty (Athiyaman, 1997; Schertzer and Schertzer, 2004; Marzo-Navarro et al., 2005) and is seen as a potential antecedent of customer loyalty (Fornell, 1992; Oliver, 1999; Rust & Zahorik, 1993).
From all the above literature review, the researcher decided to develop a conceptual framework for the study. It is shown in figure 1.
Service quality dimensions
Tangible
Responsiveness
Reliability
Assurance
Empathy
Independent variable
Dependent variable
Student loyalty
Student's satisfaction
