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The Effect of the Service Quality Provided by Saudi Universities on Students’ Satisfaction: A Marketing Approach

Journal of Administrative and Economics Science

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Title The Effect of the Service Quality Provided by Saudi Universities on Students’ Satisfaction: A Marketing Approach
 
Creator Alhudaithy, Abdullatif Ibrahim
 
Description Service quality, informed by a detailed understanding of students’ needs and demands, hasbecome an increasingly important concept in the marketing of higher educational institutions worldwide.Currently, however, the Saudi higher education sector, which has grown rapidly since its formal inceptionin 1975, is receiving criticism that its teaching provision is inadequate and its research output limited. Tothrow light on this situation, and remedy to some extent the dearth of extant research in this area, thispaper examines Saudi students’ satisfaction with the quality of various aspects of their universityexperience and the relationship of those aspects to their perceived learning outcomes, by means of asurvey based on the SERVQUAL model carried out among 364 students attending 5 universities in SaudiArabia. Among the findings, it was discovered that although instructor characteristics, course content andclassroom environment influenced students’ perceived learning outcomes to a similar degree, onlyinstructor and classroom environment influenced student satisfaction; course content was seen as lessimportant than either, albeit the curricula offered for humanities subjects were generally perceived asmore satisfactory in terms of primary knowledge provided than those offered for sciences. Satisfactionratings were lowest for instructors and for the notion that, given the choice of repeating their studies,respondents would choose the same university. These latter results in particular suggest that at least someof the criticism leveled at Saudi universities may be valid, and that there is much the universities can doto improve their service quality and thus attract more students.Keywords: Service quality, SERVQUAL, customer satisfaction, Saudi Arabia, higher education,universities, students.
 
Publisher Qassim University Academic Publishing and translation
 
Contributor —
 
Date 2015-03-31
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
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Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://publications.qu.edu.sa/ojs/index.php/economic/article/view/988
 
Source Journal Of Administrative And Economics Science; Vol 7, No 2
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://publications.qu.edu.sa/ojs/index.php/economic/article/view/988/938
 
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