International students satisfaction and loyalty : a comparative study of Malaysian and Australian higher learning institutions /by Seyama Sultana

Abstract

In every type of industry including product and service, customer satisfaction and their loyalty are the most crucial and key important parts for the success of the firms. In each and every aspect service industry is more critical and difficult than product industry. It is complex to handle and manage everything in order to make the service customers satisfied and loyal. Education industry is not an exception as this industry is a provider of services. Here the customers or the consumers are students who have versatile demands. Measuring the satisfaction level and loyalty is more significant in higher learning institutions. The countries which are determined to be established as a extraordinary international educational hubs; have no choice but to find out the most significant factors that affect satisfaction and loyalty of the international students. Therefore, it is indispensable for higher learning educational institutions to measure the level of student satisfaction and loyalty and as a result they have to find out the most influential factors that affect these two dimensions. Only by figuring out these factors the higher learning institutions can decide to invest their time, money and effort on the proper track. Consequently, this type of research which is conducted to find the factors affecting international student satisfaction and their loyalty has become the part and parcel for a country like Malaysia, which is very closed to become a developed nation and which is able to achieve a position of famous international educational hub. Further, in its vision 2020, Malaysia wants to become one of the acme educational hubs. The country can gain more benefits if the situation can be compared with that of any developed nation like Australia which has become the third best country of the world as an international education nucleus. After the comprehensive review of literatures, it is found that this type of research is already conducted hugely all over the world especially in developed countries. But in Malaysia, this type of study is still needed as the present literatures are not sufficient to enclose all the facts those are required to be found. Additionally, no literature could provide any comparative study between Malaysia and any developed country. As a consequence, through this study it can be expected to get valuable information for the policy makers of the respected field for the ultimate betterment of international student loyalty as a whole the achievement of the country as a renowned international education arena. Quantitative analysis is used in this study. Stratified random sampling technique is applied to select the respondents. More than 300 respondents were involved from different public higher learning institutions in these two countries. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) is used in order to fit the items under each construct and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is applied to measure the relationships between and among the constructs. Here four independent constructs are measured in order to find how significantly each one affects international student satisfaction and loyalty. These factors are academic issues, economic considerations, image plus prestige and infrastructure. It is found in the research that academic issues and economic considerations are more important to the international students who study in Malaysia rather than the international students who study in Australia. Image plus prestige is very important for the international student satisfaction in Australia. There remain several differences in the items under each construct also, even though the moderating effect of the countries is not significant in the case of factors affecting international student satisfaction towards student loyalty. Further research is suggested in order to find out the in-depth information about the internal students regarding their satisfaction and loyalty factors, facts and phenomena by using mixed method or involving qualitative method of study beside quantitative method. On the contrary, PhD and Masters students can be studied separately because of their vast differences in nature, objectives and activities.