An Analysis of Factors of Importance to International Postgraduate Students from Asia Studying in Victorian Universities

Student satisfaction is a key strategic variable in maintaining a competitive position in the international education market by Australian universities. The universities are facing the challenge of rising student expectations of quality, service and value for money, and the need to increase the satisfaction level of their students to retain and improve international student numbers. This process requires universities to carefully analyse the key factors contributing to student satisfaction. Using logistic regression analysis with factor scores and aggregated satisfaction scores, this study examines the relative importance of factors and their impact on the satisfaction levels of international postgraduate students from four Asian countries studying at Victorian universities. The study concludes that the dominant factors that impact on student satisfaction include the quality of education, student facilities, reputation of the institutions, the marketability of their degrees for better career prospects, and the overall customer value provided by the universities. Introduction International education is one of the fastest growing industries in Australia, contributing over $4 billion export revenue to the country’s economy (Nelson, 2002). Some researchers (Mazzarol and Hosie, 1999) assert, however, that the international tertiary education industry has entered the mature phase of its life cycle. Given the need to find alternative sources of income due to government funding constraints, competition among universities in Australia has intensified to attract and retain full fee paying students. In these circumstances, increasing the satisfaction levels of students studying in Australia has become a critical success factor. The aim of this paper is to determine some of the key factors influencing post-choice satisfaction of full fee paying Asian postgraduate international students from China, India, Indonesia and Thailand studying in Victorian universities. Drawing on the expectations /perceptions paradigm based on the SERVQUAL instrument (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry 1994, and 1985), this paper analyses the relative satisfaction among the student groups. The analysis examines the relationship between three satisfaction scores (calculated from questionnaire feedback), and the factor scores (generated from factor analysis), to establish the importance of the factors in explaining students’ satisfaction. Under the paradigm of service-recipient which considers students as customers (Havarnek and Brodwin, 1998), universities need to be highly student-focused in their service delivery. According to the theory of customer satisfaction, customers rely heavily on psychological inputs such as expectations, which play an important role in framing satisfaction evaluations (Oliver, 1996). The evaluation of the quality and performance of a service such as university education, can take place only after experiencing or consuming because customers have limited tangible pre-choice cues. The perceptions formed during this evaluative process are ANZMAC 2002 Conference Proceedings 721 key indicators of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction (Halstead et al, 1994)). In the present paper, the terms pre-choice expectations and post-choice perceptions are operationalised in order to investigate student satisfaction. Literature Review Customer satisfaction is the cornerstone of the marketing concept and one of the most widely studied and embraced constructs in marketing. It is key to customer retention and positive word-of-mouth communication (WOM) in the current context of services marketing (Harvis et al, 2000). Guolla (1999) points out that the degree of satisfaction determines the nature of WOM whether it is positive or negative. From an aggregate perspective, highly satisfied student recommend programs, return as graduate students, recruit prospective students or regularly donate as alumni. A study on an Australian university by Athiyaman (2000), further confirms the strong relationship that exists between student satisfaction and WOM and its impact on students’ choice process. The link between WOM and customer retention is therefore significant. While early research considered the satisfaction construct as a form of attitude, research in the 1980s revealed that satisfaction is more complex involving numerous measurement issues. Some researchers lamented that most of the CS/D research is focused on conceptual issues and underlying processes giving little attention to the pragmatic task of measurement (Yuksel and Rimmington, 1998). One of the widely discussed and tested approaches in measuring customer satisfaction is Oliver's (1980) expectancy-disconfirmation model or one of its variants. Expectancydisconfirmation is a derivative of adaptation-level theory and suggests that customers compare the actual product and service performance with their prior expectations. The paradigm postulates that customer satisfaction is related to the size and direction of disconfirmation, which is defined as the difference between an individual’s pre-purchase (prechoice) expectations (or some other comparison standard) and post-purchase (post-choice) performance of the product as perceived by the customer (Tse and Wilton, 1990) expectations are met or exceeded the customer is satisfied. If the performance falls short of the expectations, the customer is dissatisfied. Despite its limitations in the approach of using difference (gap) scores, the expectancydisconfirmation paradigm has gained increasing acceptability as a basis for assessing post-purchase evaluations and the endorsement of a number of researchers since it was first introduced (Bolton et al, 1999; Spreng et al, 1996; Oliver 1996; Parasuraman et al, 1994 and 1985). The development of several variants of the model using the paradigm or the use of some form of the standard performance disconfirmation paradigm in which actual choice is compared to an internal standard during satisfaction formation is a further indication of its popularity as a measurement approach (Park and Choi, 1998). Moreover, the model has had strong support across a wide variety of products (Tse et al, 1990). The main rationale behind the model is that it provides a comparison standard to facilitate confirmation or disconfirmation (Yi, 1990), and is based on matching of service outcomes with previous experiences. Such comparisons are undertaken in the consumer’s mind to establish a “calculated disconfirmation” which influences “subjective disconfirmation” (Ueltschy and Krampf, 2001; Anderson, Fornell and Lehmann, 1994) acknowledge this perspective in ANZMAC 2002 Conference Proceedings 722 several ways by claiming that satisfaction should be viewed as a judgement based on cumulative experience rather than transaction-specific exposure. The application of CS/D has received wide recognition in the service industry. In particular, the increasing interest of higher educational institutions in student satisfaction research has contributed positively to satisfaction research on services (Geall, 2000). The “Student Satisfaction Approach” developed by the Centre for Research into Quality at the University of Central England (UCE) to evaluate student feedback for quality improvement, which is being practiced by a number of universities in the world, is a case in point. This trend, according to Townley (2001), is spurred by the need to maintain a competitive advantage and build a market share in order to secure government funding based on the concept of full-time equivalent students. The work on post-choice satisfaction in international education, however, is very limited and studies focusing on international postgraduate students are rare. Some of the studies in the area included, DETYA (2000, and 1999); Kwan (1999); Tomovick et al (1996); Hausler et al (1995); Halstead et al (1994), and Burke (1986), which were largely focused on undergraduate students or individual programs. Research conducted on the postgraduate students was also confined to specific issues and no attempt has been made on a comparative analysis of the post-choice decision making behaviour of students from different countries of origin.