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Students’perceptions of service
quality in Saudi universities: the
SERVPERF model
M. Sadiq Sohail
Faculty of Management and Marketing, KFUPM Business School,
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and
Mehedi Hasan
School of Marketing and International Business, Victoria University of Wellington,
Wellington, New Zealand
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of service quality on student’s satisfaction.
Design/methodology/approach –Using empirical research, the study identified previously validated
scales of service quality and student satisfaction. Using the SERVPERF scale, data were collected from 279
students studying in public and private universities across Saudi Arabia. The model fit of the scale was
assessed to ensure that the data produced accurate outcomes. Structural equation modelling was used to test
the effects of independent variables ondependent variables.
Findings –The results suggest that four of the five dimensions of service quality, namely, tangibility,
reliability, responsiveness and assurance had a significant effect on students’satisfaction. Empathy was not
found to contribute to student satisfaction. The findings broaden and deepen our understanding of how the
dimensions of service quality reinforce students’satisfaction.
Research limitations/implications –Future research can also incorporate in the model other
variables, academic andnon-academic, related to student satisfaction.
Practical implications –The results have useful implications for decision-makers in higher education
institutions who strive to enhance students’satisfaction and increase the quality of higher education
programmes, particularly in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region in general.
Originality/value –This study uses the SERVPERF scale, which is empirically superior to the
SERVQUAL scale for measuring student satisfaction.
Keywords Service quality, Student satisfaction, Higher education, SERVPERF, Saudi Arabia
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Organizations have been placing a high priority on the quality of their services because of
their essential contribution in building competitive advantage, appealing to new customers
and maintaining an existing customer base. As the conceptualization of service quality
(Oliver, 1976), research on this subject has widely attracted the attention of researchers and
© M. Sadiq Sohail and Mehedi Hasan. Published in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Gulf
Perspectives. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative
Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create
derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full
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LTHE
17,1
54
Received 22 September2019
Revised 19 September2020
1 November 2020
Accepted 3 November2020
Learning and Teaching in Higher
Education: Gulf Perspectives
Vol. 17 No. 1, 2021
pp. 54-66
Emerald Publishing Limited
2077-5504
DOI 10.1108/LTHE-08-2020-0016
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2077-5504.htm
practitioners (Karl et al.,2016;Gorsuch, 1990). For educational institutions around the world,
the provision of quality services in the setting of higher education is of primary importance.
In general, the quality of higher education is a vital prerequisite for industrial, economic and
social development. While previous research has demonstrated that improving service
quality is one of the main objectives of higher education service providers, the opinion of
students in determining service equality improvements has not been taken into account,
especially in developing nations (Osman and Saputra, 2019;Bozbay et al., 2020).
Previous research has made sound contributions in the field of customer satisfaction.
Ever since Parasuraman et al. (1985) proposed the connection between service quality and
customer satisfaction, numerous studies have established that higher levels of service
quality drive higher levels of customer satisfaction. A prevailing view, in the setting of
higher education, is to consider students as customers (Judson and Taylor, 2014). Higher
educational institutions (HEI) are increasingly focusing on student satisfaction in the wake
of growing competition (Kashif et al., 2016). Further support is provided by various studies
that suggest that the main customers of the higher education segment are students, as they
are involved in the selection and the purchase of services (Ali et al., 2016). Therefore, it has
been argued that the satisfaction of students is significant because service quality is the only
performance indicator for a higher education service provider (Barnett, 2011).
While there are wide-ranging studies in the domain of service quality in higher education,
specificgapsintheliteratureareidentifiable. To begin with, among the various tools that have
been used to evaluate service quality, the SERVQUAL model has been the most extensively
used to demonstrate a present condition of service quality by providing the gap score between
perception and expectation (Ali and Raza, 2017). Although the SERVQUAL tool has been
adopted in various studies, issues have arisen in the disconfirmationmodeintheperception-
expectation (P-E) gap scores (Jain and Gupta, 2004). The legitimacy of the P-E assessment
framework has also been criticized because of its problematic conceptualization and
assessment of the expectation factor of the SERVQUAL model. The present study uses the
SERVPERF model, which is methodologically a noticeable upgrade over the SERVQUAL
model because performance-only measurement items have been adopted by researchers (Brady
et al., 2002). Yet, a few studies have applied this model in the context of HEI (Sultan and Wong,
2014), particularly in the Gulf region.
The current research study sought to fill this gap by examining the effects of service
quality dimensions on students’satisfaction with HEIs in Saudi Arabia. These empirical
findings can help the higher education policymakers and administrators in Saudi Arabia to
improve the quality of services provided and enhance student satisfaction.
Literature review
Measuring service quality
Given the strong influence of service quality on organizations, this topic has been a major
focus of research over the past decade (Ali et al., 2016). However, there is little agreement on
a unanimously recognized conceptualization and a standardized theory defining service
quality. According to Parasuraman et al. (1985), service quality can be defined as an overall
judgement similar to attitude towards the service and generally accepted as an antecedent of
overall customer satisfaction. In the context of higher education, the student-perceived
service levels can put pressure on HEI to monitor and implement service quality.
SERVQUAL, an acronym for service quality, is a multi-dimensional survey instrument,
designed to capture the consumers’expectations and perceptions along five dimensions of
service quality: tangibility, reliability, assurance, responsiveness and empathy. The survey
instrument was built on the expectancy-disconfirmation paradigm, which essentially means
Students’
perceptions of
service quality
55
that the quality of service is understood from the customers’pre-use expectations of quality
and confirmed or disconfirmed by their actual perceptions after the usage experience. Ever
since the development of the SERVQUAL survey questionnaire by Parasuraman et al.
(1985), it has been widely used to measure service quality in a variety of industries, contexts
and cultural settings (Galeeva, 2016). This survey instrument had been found to be
relatively robust but it has also attracted criticism from researchers leading to the
development of an alternative model.
The SERVQUAL model has been criticized on several conceptual and operational
grounds (Jain and Gupta, 2004). The usage of gap scores, the predictive power of the
measurement items, the length of the questionnaire and the legitimacy of the five-dimension
structure are the major concerns raised towards the model (see Babakus and Boller, 1992).
Responding to the shortcomings of the SERVQUAL model and the need for a systematically
more accurate model, Cronin and Taylor (1992) developed the SERVPERF model, an
acronym for service performance. As this model is based only on the performance
perception component of the multi-dimension, measurement items are considered to be far
more efficient as they were reduced by 50%.
Empirically, SERVPERF is a superior measure of service quality in comparison to
SERVQUAL as it has the capability to clarify more variance in the overall service quality as
it is assessed with a single-item measure. This led to considerable support over time in
favour of the SERVPERF model (Akdere et al., 2020;Leong et al.,2015) and practitioners
have increasingly been using this performance-only measure of service quality (Ngo and
Nguyen, 2016;Teeroovengadum et al.,2016). Based on these observations, the present study
adopted the SERVPERF model.
Higher education service quality
As students are the main stakeholders of HEIs, service quality in the context of higher
education has relied on the service experience of students as provided by HEIs (Jancey and
Burns, 2013). Further, the satisfaction of students is substantially influenced by their
perception of service quality (Alves and Raposo, 2010). Given the importance of this
relationship, several researchers in the setting of higher education, have tried to advance
and scrutinize service quality.
Most studies in the field, however, have used a P-E paradigm to explore service quality in
HEIs (Calvo-Porral et al., 2013). Contemporary scholars have used traditional items or used
adapted SERVQUAL measurement questions and found all the dimensions of the adapted
SERVQUAL model to strongly support the assessment of service quality in higher
education (Shekarchizadeh et al.,2011). Several other studies have used the five traditional
dimensions of the original model. For example, a study undertaken in Iranian universities
investigated the service quality of higher education. In this study, while assessing the
service quality of a university, some dimensions such as empathy, tangibility and assurance
were lacking provision (Abili et al.,2012). Another study conducted in an African university,
found reliability to be the leading dimension of students’perceived service quality
(Cheruiyot and Maru, 2013). In addition, Noaman et al. (2017) developed a model to assess
quality in HEI using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. The AHP is a
multiple-criteria decision-making method and has been used in the assessment of service
quality. This method was developed to assist decision-makers using multiple criteria.
However, the AHP method is not favoured among researchers because it introduces
imprecision as it requires the judgements of experts (Liu et al., 2020).
While several studies have examined service quality in the field of higher education
across the globe, research on the quality of service in HEIs in Saudi Arabia is scant. Sohail
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and Shaikh (2004) undertook a study on students’perception of service quality, but this was
limited to a business school of a university in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, while most studies
have used the SERVQUAL model, it would be useful to use the SERVPERF to explore the
service quality of HEIs in Saudi Arabia, which has been largely overlooked in previous
studies.
Student satisfaction
Customer satisfaction has been widely referred to in the literature in relation to business and
marketing, due to its importance in accomplishing organizational goals. Furthermore,
customer satisfaction is considered a benchmark of performance for organizations to
achieve excellence (Sohail, 2018). Several extant studies have examined customer
satisfaction and its relations with perceived value, service experience, service quality and
consequences of service evaluation.
Within the field of service quality, students in HEIs are considered customers as they can
reasonably demand their opinions to be heard and acted upon. In HEIs, students are the
main customers and partners, as they are directly involved in the selection and purchase of
services. Past research has emphasized that student satisfaction performs a significant part
in shaping the precision and genuineness of the services being offered. Several other studies
have also stated that the satisfaction of students is important as a performance indicator of
service quality in HEIs (see Barnett, 2011).
The current study was conducted in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), which is the
largest nation on the Arabian Peninsula. Traditionally known as an oil-based economy,
Saudi Arabia is fast-moving towards diversifying its economy. As a result, the higher
education system in Saudi Arabia is undergoing rapid transformation. With numerous
renowned HEIs, Saudi Arabia has been amongst the fastest growing education systems in
the Middle East and Gulf region. In 2018, seven Saudi universities were listed on the QS
World University Rankings. In the QS Arab Region University Rankings (2018), 21 of the
top 100 universities were in Saudi Arabia. Overall, Saudi Arabia achieved the 36th position
for university education in the world (Top Universities, 2018).
Since 2016, Vision 2030, adopted by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin
Abdulaziz Al Saud, has put a specific focus on the development of the economy and
education to help Saudi Arabia emerge as one of the most prosperous nations in the world.
HEI leaders are responding to this vision and a major challenge faced by Saudi universities
is improving quality (Alharbi, 2016). Thus, the aim of this study is to analyse the student
satisfaction level in higher education in Saudi Arabia. The present research will help HEIs in
their pursuit of improving service quality, attaining student satisfaction and contributing to
achieving Vision 2030.
The study
Context and participants
The target population for this study was all students studying in universities in Saudi
Arabia. In total, 10 universities from Saudi Arabia which were listed in the top 50 of the QS
Arab Region University Rankings in 2018 were chosen for this study (Quacquarelli
Symonds, 2018). The websites of these 10 universities were explored and the Chairs of major
departments were contacted through email. The Chairs were given information about the
student survey, the purpose of the survey and a request was made to allow their students to
participate in the survey by distributing the survey link.
The target respondents were undergraduate and postgraduate students studying in
Saudi Arabian universities. All participants were required to be over 18years and currently
Students’
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57
enrolled in any undergraduate or postgraduate course. The survey was conducted online
using SurveyMonkey. Each participant provided a signed informed consent before
responding to the survey.
Data collection and procedures
The study adopted the SERVPERF model. The survey instrument comprised 21 items,
adopted from the SERVQUAL dimensions: reliability, tangibility, assurance, responsiveness,
reliability and empathy (Parasuraman et al., 1985). These dimensions were used to determine
the perceptions of customers with regard to:
Tangibles: such as physical facilities, personnel appearance and equipment.
Reliability: the ability to deliver the assured service precisely and reliably.
Responsiveness: intention to assist students and provide prompt services.
Assurance: employees’knowledge, politeness and capability to bear trust and assurance.
Empathy: taking care of individual students.
The performance-only items were measured on a five-point Likert scale (from 5 = strongly
agree to 1 = strongly disagree). The dependent variable in this study was the overall student
satisfaction with the HEIs.
The instrument was composed of two parts: service quality and student satisfaction. The
service quality measures were adapted from Nadiri et al. (2009) and the student satisfaction
measures were adapted from the study of Laroche et al. (2004). The questionnaire was
initially written in English. This was then translated to the local Arabic language using the
back-translation method (Malhotra, 2019), as the medium of instruction in some of the target
universities was Arabic. The face validity of the questionnaire was tested by performing a
pilot test on 15 randomly selected students at the authors’university to ensure the validity,
appropriateness and applicability of the questionnaire. After the pilot test, the wording of a
few questions was adjusted and refined. Both the Arabic and English versions of the survey
were used for data collection because they had both been seen to measure exactly the same
items and constructs.
After completing the data collection process, data cleaning through a consistency check
was performed. The incomplete surveys were excluded from the sample. This resulted in
279 usable responses.
Results
Sample demographics
The sample showed that 57% of the participants were men, while 65.2% were in the 18–24
age group. With respect to the level of education, 66% were pursuing undergraduate
courses, 27% were postgraduate students and the remaining participants were studying
technical and diploma courses. Other details of the respondents’background are shown in
Table 1.
Model testing
The items used to assess each construct were verified using factor analysis to prove the
factor structure and find items for the omission, that is, items with below standard
factor loading and/or high cross-loading. Varimax rotation was used to get a simple
structure and factors with eigenvalue below 1 were discarded (Gorsuch, 1990).
Tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy were the five
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dimensions of the SERVPERF instrument. All the factor loadings exceeded the
minimum recommended value of 0.50 on their intended constructs except for the fourth
dimension of the SERVPERF, namely, assurance (ASRNC4), which was loaded below
the recommended minimum value and was dropped.
Content, convergent and discriminant validity were performed to further validate the
survey instrument (Hernaus et al.,2012). Using a two-stage process, development and
judgement, content validity was established (Lynn, 1986). All the items were borrowed from
previous research in the development stage. For the judgement stage, five experts were
asked to assess individual items and instruments. Some minor changes were made in the
wording of the stamen after the judgement process (Lynn, 1986). By measuring Cronbach’s
alphas, average variance extracted and composite reliability and convergent validity were
assessed. Table 2 below presents the factor loading, Cronbach’s alphas (
a
), composite
reliability (CR), average variance extracted (AVE), mean and standard deviation (SD) for all
the research variables. All the CR values exceeded the suggested value of 0.70 (Nunnally,
2010), confirming the reliability of all the constructs. As proposed by Fornell and Larcker
(1981), the AVE value of 0.50 or more demonstrates that it explains more than half of the
variance of its individual items and, thus, convergent validity is established. As shown in
Table 1.
Respondent
demographic profile
(n= 279)
Demographics Frequency (%)
Gender
Male 159 57
Female 120 43
Age
18 to 24 182 65.2
25–34 76 27.2
35 to 44 19 6.8
45 and over 2 0.7
Level at university
Undergraduate 185 66.3
Postgraduate 56 20.1
Other 38 13.7
Field of study
Engineering, science and technology 105 37.6
Business and management 58 20.8
Medical, dentistry and nursing 48 17.2
Arts, education and humanities 8 2.9
Other 60 21.5
Nationality
Saudi 248 88.9
Non-Saudi 31 11.1
Public/private university
Public 232 83.2
Private 47 16.8
Location of the university
Eastern province 87 31.18
Central province 83 29.75
Western province 59 21.15
Southern province 31 11.11
Northern province 19 6.81
Students’
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59
Table 2, all the AVE values for each of the constructs exceeded the recommended value of
0.50. So, the convergent validity of the constructs was established.
To scrutinize the uniqueness of each construct from the others that are integrated into the
model, the discriminant validity was then verified. By comparing the AVE for any two
constructs to the square of the correlation between the two constructs, a discriminant
validity test was performed (Hair et al., 2010). The squared correlation coefficient of
constructs was found to be less than the AVE of each construct confirming a high
discriminant validity.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was undertaken to measure the model fit and
validity of the constructs (Hair et al.,2010). The CFA revealed a good model fit for the
absolute fit indices and the incremental fit indices, with the signal that the model could be
parsimonious. To measure the model fit, the constructs of the model were tested using
AMOS software. Hair et al. (2010) reasoned that model fit indices ought to meet the
satisfactory benchmark before deciding the model fit indices. A subset of indices such as
x
2/df (CMIN/DF), GFI, AGFI, CFI and RMSEA are widely accepted and recommended by
SEM researchers (Mahrous and Abdelmaaboud, 2017). Table 3 demonstrates that every
model-fit index surpassed the suggested value from past research, displaying a satisfactory
fit for the gathered data.
Table 2.
Descriptive statistics
and reliability
measures
Constructs and items Factor loading AVE CR
a
Mean SD
Tangible 0.530959 0.81616 0.80 3.4116 0.9295
Tangible1 0.74
Tangible2 0.87
Tangible3 0.58
Tangible4 0.71
Reliability 0.559394 0.83437 0.82 2.821 0.93355
RLBLTY1 0.81
RLBLTY2 0.81
RLBLTY3 0.66
RLBLTY4 0.70
Responsiveness 0.657528 0.85194 0.77 3.3572 0.90707
RSPNSV1 0.81
RSPNSV2 0.84
RSPNSV3 0.78
Assurance 0.585403 0.806791 0.73 3.3811 0.8883
ASRNC1 0.63
ASRNC2 0.83
ASRNC3 0.81
Empathy 0.62521 0.831976 0.84 3.0705 1.00965
EMPTHY1 0.67
EMPTHY2 0.85
EMPTHY3 0.84
Satisfaction 0.628126 0.834276 0.73 3.4185 0.81671
SAT1 0.84
SAT2 0.83
SAT3 0.70
Notes: AVE >0.5; Cronbach’s alpha >0.8; CR >0.7
Source: Based on Fornell and Larcker, 1981;Nunnally, 2010
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Service quality and student satisfaction
The comprehensive outcomes of the structural model and link between the five dimensions
of service quality and student satisfaction are shown below in Table 4. The link between
satisfaction and tangibility was supported, with tangibility significantly affecting
satisfaction (
b
= 0.23, p<0.01). Similarly, dimensions of reliability, responsiveness and
assurance also significantly influenced student satisfaction (reliability:
b
= 0.21, p<0.05;
responsiveness:
b
= 0.19, p <0.01; assurance:
b
= 0.61, p <0.01). However, the relationship
between empathy and student satisfaction indicated that empathy, which refers to how
much the service employees of the universities take care of the individual student, does not
significantly influence student satisfaction. The R
2
value was 0.718, demonstrating that
satisfaction can describe 71.8% of the variance by the five predictors.
Discussion
This study has examined the relationship between the five dimensions of service quality
(tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy) and students’satisfaction
in Saudi Universities. Of these five dimensions, four of them, namely, tangibility, reliability,
responsiveness and assurance, have a positive and substantial effect on Saudi students’
satisfaction with their universities.
The study found that assurance strongly explains student satisfaction. That assurance is
the most important dimension of service quality (
b
= 0.61, p<0.001) is also supported by a
number of other studies (Akdere et al.,2020;Nadiri et al.,2009). In the context of higher
education, this implies that students’evaluation of educational service quality is influenced
to a great extent by faculty’s knowledge, courtesy and ability to inspire trust and confidence.
Higher education institutions must, therefore, ensure that the teaching and support staff
have adequate training, knowledge and skills to deal with the students in a polite manner so
that they can build trust and assurance among the students. Tangibility (
b
= 0.23, p<0.01)
is the next most important factor in the study findings. Modernization of the university’s
Table 3.
Fit indices for
measurement models
Fit indices
Suggested
value
Recommended
by Author(s)
Measurement model
(present study)
x
2
/df <3Fox and Hayduk (1989) 1.553
Normed fit index (NFI) >0.9 Bentler and Bonett (1980) 0.921
Goodness of fit index (GFI) >0.9 Scott (1995) 0.924
Adjusted for the degree of freedom (AGFI) >0.8 Scott (1995) 0.897
Root mean square error estimation (RMSEA) <0.08 Bagozzi and Yi (1988) 0.045
Comparative fit index (CFI) >0.9 Bagozzi and Yi (1988) 0.958
Table 4.
Results of the
structural model
Constructs Relations
b
S. E. tpOutcome
Tangibility !satisfaction 0.23** 0.066 3.41 0.001 Accepted
Reliability !satisfaction 0.21** 0.063 3.209 0.014 Accepted
Responsiveness !satisfaction 0.19** 0.055 3.448 0.001 Accepted
Assurance !satisfaction 0.61*** 0.057 8.771 0.000 Accepted
Empathy !satisfaction 0.05 0.066 0.843 0.4 Rejected
Notes: **p<0.01; ***p<0.001; S.E. = Standard error; direct effect on satisfaction: R
2
= 0.718
Students’
perceptions of
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61
equipment, making the classrooms, projectors and boards visually more attractive and clean
and the professional presentability of faculty members and staff enhances students’
perception of the quality of higher educational institutions. Past studies in higher education
settings have also found that the peripheral aspects and facilities have a direct and indirect
effect on student satisfaction (Akdere et al.,2020;Cho and Hyun, 2016).
The reliability dimension (
b
= 0.21, p<0.01) has also been found to significantly
contribute to the students’service quality perception in a similar fashion as in previous
studies conducted elsewhere (Akdere et al.,2020;Parasuraman et al.,1985). Moreover,
students valued the reliability dimension, which is the institution’s ability to deliver the
assured service precisely and reliably. This implies that universities should strive to ensure
that they maintain proper communication with accurate information on service
performance. Academic staff who play a pivotal role in student satisfaction (Kashif et al.,
2016), should be expected to contribute effectively in communicating, delivering education
and developing a quality assurance system. Responsiveness (
b
= 0.19, p<0.01) was also
found to be one of the important dimensions. The responsiveness dimension is associated
with staff and faculty’s ability to inform students when the services will be delivered, to
deliver the services as soon as possible and their overall willingness to help students. To
increase student perceptions of the dimension of responsiveness in the higher education
context, students need to feel psychologically dependent on the ability of the university staff
to offer services, demonstrate associated knowledge and experience, effectively inform
students in all aspects of their university services and well-being and provide timely
services.
Finally, this study found that empathy does not have an effect on student satisfaction,
which is in contrast to findings in a number of previous studies, where empathy was found
to have an influential role in student satisfaction (Cho and Hyun, 2016;Fleischman et al.,
2017;Mahmoud and Khalifa, 2015). Empathy in educational settings is the ability to show
care and understanding towards a student, which can be met by having student-friendly
policies and procedures, as well as ensuring staff has good interpersonal skills. The lack of
support for empathy and its influence on student satisfaction has been reported in some
previous studies (see Høst and Knie-Andersen, 2004).
It is evident from the findings of the present study that student satisfaction is influenced
by different elements, other than empathy and this can be due to the cultural context of the
study. The lack of influence of empathy can be explained by the power distance”, which
measures how a culture views power relationships between people (Hofstede, 1980). Power
distance is one of the six dimensions of national culture based on extensive research by
Hofstede (1980). Saudi Arabia scores high on this dimension, implying that individual
differences in the hierarchy of power are highly acknowledged and shared by members of
society. Saudi students, therefore, do not have an expectation of empathy from faculty and
staff because they view them as authorities that are seldom questioned and they are to be
followed.
Conclusion
The present study sought to investigate the effects of service quality dimensions on
students’satisfaction with HEIs in Saudi Arabia. The results of this study suggest that four
of the five dimensions of service quality, namely, tangibility, reliability, responsiveness and
assurance, have a significant effect on students’satisfaction with higher education in Saudi
Arabia. Empathy was not found to contribute to student satisfaction. Previous empirical
research supports the finding that service quality has substantial effects on customer
satisfaction. The results of this study show that tangibility significantly influences
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satisfaction, a finding supported by several other studies. Helgesen and Nesset’s (2007)
findings support this relationship in the setting of higher education. The influence of
satisfaction on three other dimensions, namely, reliability, responsiveness and assurance,
was also in line with previous studies.
Whilethisresearchclarifies the connection between combined service quality dimensions
and how this could lead to student satisfaction, some limitations of the research should be
pointed out. Firstly, some of the dimensions such as academic, non-academic and programme-
related aspects were not incorporated in the study (Ali et al.,2016). For a better comprehension of
causal factors leading to student satisfaction, future research may include dimensions such as
coursework quality, non-curriculum events and other university-related factors as determinants
of student satisfaction. Secondly, this study has used a cross-sectional design. While the
cross-sectional design has been used in a large number of educational and marketing research, it
is recommended longitudinal studies be conducted in future service quality research. Thirdly, to
have a more in-depth understanding of the cultural influence on student satisfaction, it is
recommended to follow a qualitative approach in researching student expectations.
Despite its limitations, this research study has contributed to the development of theory
by providing reasoned justification for the use of SERVPERF measures that has been
lacking in previous research in educational settings. On the strength of this, future studies
can position more appropriately and direct their research efforts with greater conviction in
the area of student satisfaction in diverse cultural settings.
The practical importance of this study is to provide insights to leaders of HEI in Saudi
Arabia on how to improve students’satisfaction. The results of the study demonstrate the
dimensions of service quality, which influence student satisfaction. Administrators should
understand the processes of these dimensions to capture and use these inputs to aid student
satisfaction. The study has also several implications for policymakers in Saudi Arabia.
Research has established that universities and educational institutions are looking for
academic quality to become more globalized and to ensure consistency, thereby producing
successful results (Abdulhalem and Altbach, 2013). The Ministry of Education in KSA and
other agencies must review and improve the quality of universities to ensure compliance
with international global standards and world-class universities.
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Further reading
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making”,Higher Education Management and Policy, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 1-24.
Corresponding author
M. Sadiq Sohail can be contacted at: ssohail@kfupm.edu.sa
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