Strategic and bonding effects of enhancing the student feedback process

ABSTRACT

In order to produce distinctiveness that leads to competitive advantage, higher education institutions must remain cognizant that students are co-creators. Thus, to create genuine value in educational service delivery, there is a need for a more highly developed understanding of the student-institutional intersection. The present research contributes to the marketing of higher education by developing and testing a model related to the antecedents of a broader conception of student feedback as part of student/customer orientation and co-creation. Conceived as customer feedback, student feedback to an educational institution can be positive (compliment), negative (complaint), or be an idea for an improvement to any person, or service group of the institution. Perceived ease of the feedback process and perceived usefulness, customer orientation and affective commitment are found as antecedents to intention to provide feedback. The result is a model with conceptual and managerial implications for strategically bonding students to universities.

KEYWORDS:

• Feedback
• customer orientation
• market orientation
• customer engagement
• commitment
• perceived usefulness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The nomenclature of Singh's dimensions are ironic, in that in a socially networked world, word of mouth is more public than ever, and feedback to the organization often stays private and sometimes no one even hears about it internally. The only scenario where feedback to the organization would be public is through organization online communities, blogs, rating and review websites, all concepts not yet fathomed in 1990.