An exploratory study of students’ expectations and perceptions of service quality in a South African higher education institution

Williams, Alyssa Shawntay

Title: An exploratory study of students’ expectations and perceptions of service quality in a South African higher education institution
Creator: Williams, Alyssa Shawntay
Subject: SERVQUAL (Service quality framework)
Subject: Relationship marketing
Subject: Consumer satisfaction
Subject: Sampling (Statistics)
Subject: College students Attitudes
Subject: Universities and colleges South Africa
Date Issued: 2018
Date: 2018
Type: text
Type: Thesis
Type: Masters
Type: MCom
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63844
Identifier: vital:28496
Description: Within the past few years, higher education institutions have come under an exorbitant amount of pressure to restructure, increase funding and grow student numbers, whilst still preserving the service quality they offer. The purpose of this study is to measure students’ expectations and perceptions in a higher education institution and establish how significant of a gap exists between what is expected and what is perceived. The instrument utilised within the present study is SERVQUAL. A convenience sampling approach was adopted, furthermore, both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data pertaining to the objectives concerning students’ gap between expectations and perceptions and hypotheses regarding the gap between students’ differences in each faculty, respectively. The study found that there were gaps in all dimensions with the order being, from highest to lowest: Reliability – Responsiveness – Assurance – Empathy – Tangibility. In addition, the significant difference in means according to faculty was established and the only dimension with a significant difference was Empathy. These results were used to offer recommendations to management, faculties and departments of the higher education institution under study about where they are deficient, consequently, improving their services to enhance their service quality and increase their competitive advantage but without financial strain. Overall, the conclusions the present study reached was that students and higher education institutions need to have a mutual interest in their relations. This means that as much as higher education institutions need to provide high service quality to students, students need to be willing to provide feedback and interact.
Format: 152 pages
Format: pdf
Publisher: Rhodes University
Publisher: Faculty of Commerce, Management
Language: English
Rights: Williams, Alyssa Shawntay

Hits: 2448
Visitors: 2509
Downloads: 170

Collections

Williams, Alyssa Shawntay (Ms)

RU Department of Management

		Thumbnail	File	Description	Size	Format
View Details Download			SOURCE1	Adobe Acrobat PDF	2 MB	Adobe Acrobat PDF	View Details Download