Student customer experience

Abstract

The higher education (HE) landscape has been undergoing significant changes over the last decade. The trends of globalization and marketization of HE has had a profound impact on the dynamic relationship between students and higher education institutions (HEI) as service providers. Research efforts have been focused on understanding the role of students as customers, drivers of quality and satisfaction, and the emotional aspects of student customer experience (SCX). Despite an ongoing debate on whether students are customers and to what extent the business paradigm can be applied to HE, focusing on students’ higher education experience makes perfect sense, since students provide revenue and create a need for all the supporting services. This paper reviews the literature on SCX in the HE context. The paper aims to reduce the fragmentation of the field by spotting gaps and finding fruitful areas for future research. Using a bibliometric method based on articles indexed in the Web of Science database, it aims to identify the current state of knowledge in the field. The research contributes to both marketing and education theory by offering venues for new research. For policymakers in HE, it may serve as an up-to-date information source when looking for theoretically proven evidence for decision-making.

The Roles of Professional Socialization and Higher Education Context in Prosocial and Pro-Environmental Attitudes of Social Science and Humanities versus Business Students in Italy and Croatia

“…Another venue worth exploring is related to HEIs' potential focus on how students value their educational experiences based on the idea of students as educational customers [63]. Because of the increased role of student fees in HE financing, students might find themselves in the role of paying customers, 'shopping around' for courses with low academic standards and generous grades.…”

Relationship between perceived value, student experience, and university reputation: structural equation modeling

“…The complexity of measuring and managing student experience, along with its multidimensional nature, is closely related to the duration of educational services, the number of interactions with various elements and stakeholders with whom the student interacts (Xu et al, 2018), and the diverse roles students assume during their studies that extend beyond the customer role (Dropulić et al, 2021). To create a unique experience, HEIs strive to engage students in the co-creation of their educational experiences (Pinna et al, 2023).…”

Factors affecting quality of life and learning-life balance of university students in business higher education

“…Modern universities are also ecosystems that play a significant role in innovation, lifelong learning and sustainable development (Chung et al, 2022;Ossiannilsson, 2022). Universities can also be understood as multi-stakeholder communities, with students being one of the most important stakeholder groups (de Matos Pedro et al, 2022) The globalisation and marketisation of higher education have brought significant changes in university life; students have become competition-inducing customers of university services (Allam and Malik, 2020), where they are active value co-creators whose satisfaction is of prominent importance (Dropulić et al, 2021). The term "happy university" has emerged in literature (Chan and Fong, 2020 p. 30;Myers, 2015, p. 720), highlighting that a happy university environment can contribute not only to the development of the individual but also to the development of higher education (Nie et al, 2021).…”