How can universities improve student loyalty? The roles of university social responsibility, service quality, and “customer” satisfaction and trust

Abstract

PurposeStudent loyalty is important if universities are to stay in business by recruiting and retaining satisfied students who provide positive evaluations of their university to others. The current study employed a theoretical framework established by consumer researchers to test the hypothesis that university social responsibility (USR) would predict student loyalty, but that this relation would be mediated by perceived service quality, student satisfaction, and student trust in their university.Design/methodology/approachFee-paying university students in Pakistan (n = 608) completed a questionnaire to assess their perception of USR and service quality, their satisfaction with and trust in their university, and loyalty toward their university.FindingsStructural equation modelling with partial least squares software supported the hypotheses that higher perceived USR would be related to higher student loyalty, and that this relation would be mediated by perceived service quality, student satisfaction, and student trust.Originality/valueThis study provides a novel contribution to the limited literature on USR and its relations with student loyalty. Several models have previously examined the relation between corporate social responsibility and general consumer loyalty, but these have limited applicability to the education sector. The data in this study support a model showing that USR supports student loyalty through its positive impact on perceptions of service quality, student satisfaction, and student trust. The findings suggest that USR could be a marketing tool that supports student loyalty, as long as USR initiatives increase students' perceptions of service quality, satisfaction and trust in their university.

The Effect of Satisfaction on Trust, Social Identification and Loyalty Amongst International Students in Malaysian Public Universities

“…Different literature on the relationship between customer and service provider has identified trust to be a predictor of customer satisfaction and loyalty (Gul, 2014;Jones & Afnan, 2019) because when a customer is satisfied with service and loyal to the provider, he is basically trusting it (Latif, Bunce, & Ahmad, 2021). Trust is also considered to be a stronger emotion than satisfaction because it better predicts customer loyalty (Ranaweera & Prabhu, 2003;Ismanova, 2019).…”

“…Specifically, empirical studies have found trust in the university setting to increase collaboration between student and school (Mitchell, Kensler & Tschannen-Moran, 2018;Abdelmaaboud, Peña, & Mahrous, 2020), academic performance (Ennen, Stark & Lassiter, 2015;Latif, Bunce, & Ahmad, 2021), healthy school climates and quality school life (Hongwidjojo, Monika & Wijaya, 2018;Jones & Afnan, 2019), collective teacher efficacy (Flood & Angelle, 2017), triadic set of interactions and academic optimism (Cansoy & Parlar, 2018), and student identification with school (Mitchell, Kensler, & Tschannen-Moran, 2018).…”

Students’ Perceptions on the University Social Responsibilities of a Malaysian Private University: Does Gender Matter?

“…Section A was designed to solicit demographic profiles of the respondents such as gender, type of students, age, race, and education level. Section B comprised the dimensions of short-form USR, namely ethical and philanthropic responsibilities adapted from (Latif, 2018;Latif et al, 2021). For section B, the researchers used the five-point Likert-type scale with (1) Strongly disagree, (2) Disagree, (3) Somewhat agree, (4) Agree, and (5) Strongly agree to measure the variables.…”

“…Hence, the current study focuses on the current students as they are the major stakeholders of the university and universities unable to survive without the students (Dagilienė & Mykolaitienė, 2015;Geryk, 2016). Furthermore, researchers argued that students give more attention to USR practices than other university stakeholders (Kouatli, 2019, Latif et al, 2021, which justified examining students as the institution's main stakeholder. In addition, previous studies have argued that gender plays a significant role when it comes to perceiving the social responsibility practices, where female students will be paying more attention to the social responsibility initiatives as compared to male students (Berényi & Deutsch, 2017;Lu et al, 2020), while other studies found that gender did not influence students' perception on the social responsibility (Teixeira et al, 2018).…”

“…Past studies on social responsibility mainly focused on a four-dimensional pyramid model in which Carroll (1979) emphasized that CSR comprises economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities. However, USR dimensions that focus on the specific dimensions relevant to the emerging economies, such as 1) ethical responsibilities, 2) research responsibilities, and 3) philanthropy responsibilities, required further extension of study (Latif, 2018;Latif et al, 2021). Most importantly, these items are pertinent in Malaysia as a developing country because the items were compiled and collated from existing global social responsibility best practices measured in the education industry.…”