Sustaining Customer Loyalty in Higher Education
Marcellia Susan
1a
, Jacinta Winarto
1b
, Agus Aribowo
1
, Yusuf Osman Raihin
1
,
Martalena Martalena
1
, Herlina Herlina
1c
, Herman Kambono
2
and Enny Prayogo
2d
1
Department of Management, Maranatha Christian University, Bandung, Indonesia
2
Department of Accounting, Maranatha Christian University, Bandung, Indonesia
Keywords: Educational Service, Student Loyalty, Student Satisfaction, Higher Education.
Abstract: Service providers conduct various efforts to achieve more than just short-term targets. Their efforts not only
focus on providing the best value for customers but also to obtain their loyalty. In the context of higher
education, customer loyalty implicitly indicates the existence of a long-term relationship between higher
education institutions and their students. The study aims to determine the effect of student satisfaction related
to various aspects provided by higher education institutions on their loyalty. Data were collected from
respondents through questionnaires which were then processed using multiple regression methods to
determine the interrelationship between research variables. The results show the impact of student satisfaction
on student loyalty, and it is expected to be beneficial to higher education institutions to obtain an overview of
student satisfaction with both academic and non-academic aspects that can sustain student loyalty and
prioritize their decision based on these factors.
1 INTRODUCTION
Higher Education provides educational services for
students who are pursuing education to gain
competence in certain fields of knowledge.
Educational services are similar to other types of
services that have different characteristics from goods
because services are intangible, cannot be separated
from service providers, vary depending on the service
provider, and is consumed at the same time with the
production (Kotler & Keller, 2016). In the context of
higher education services, service providers offer
services that fulfill market needs, both for students
who consume educational services through the
learning processes, as well as for higher education
graduate users. This applies especially to students as
the consumers who undergo learning process in a
university by their own decision and w`ould stay and
complete said learning process through a long period
of time. The Higher Education Institution will have a
a
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7716-3324
b
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1410-3735
c
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5150-6894
d
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8805-5254
long-term relationship with students after they decide
to "buy" the educational services offered. In this case,
optimal educational services are needed to get
consistent and long-term loyalty (Abbas, 2019).
For an educational institution, students will be its
main interest, which means that the success of an
educational institution is determined by their
students’ satisfaction. In this case, service providers
are already aware of the role of customer satisfaction.
The higher education literature also shows the
importance of student satisfaction (Weerasinghe,
Lalitha, & Fernando, 2017). The measurement of
Student Satisfaction could refer to several aspects,
such as quality of academics, administration,
infrastructure, social life, and support services
(Thomas, 2011), or administration, discipline and
values, courses, facilities, faculty, harmony, and skill
development (Austin & Pervaiz, 2017).
In addition to student satisfaction, student loyalty
is an important factor for higher education service
providers in designing strategies that are expected to
Susan, M., Winarto, J., Aribowo, A., Raihin, Y., Martalena, M., Herlina, H., Kambono, H. and Prayogo, E.
Sustaining Customer Loyalty in Higher Education.
DOI: 10.5220/0010745700003112
In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Emerging Issues in Humanity Studies and Social Sciences (ICE-HUMS 2021), pages 151-154
ISBN: 978-989-758-604-0
Copyright
c
 2022 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
151

be able to obtain good quality students (Austin &
Pervaiz, 2017). The key success of higher education
management is determined by student loyalty
(Bakrie, Sujanto, & Rugaiyah, 2019). By identifying
the antecedents of student loyalty, Higher Education
Institutions can take advantage to maintain students'
loyalty (El-Kassar, Makki, & Perez, 2018). There is a
relationship between students' satisfaction and their
loyalty. The higher the satisfaction experienced by
students, the higher their loyalty to higher education
(Leonnard, Daryanto, Sukandar, & Yusuf, 2014).
Loyalty is related to maintaining existing
customers and trying to acquire new customers
(Rengel, Ramirez, & Benavides, 2017). Efforts to
retain existing customers are not less important than
acquiring new customers (Giner & Rillo, 2016).
Loyalty in the context of higher education does not
only apply when students are still in their study period
at university but will continue until after students
graduate (Giner & Rillo, 2016). Higher education
institutions need to make efforts to build a long-term
relationship with the students (Orozco & Arroyo,
2017). Despite many previous studies that have
confirmed the impact of student satisfaction on their
loyalty, several other studies have shown different
results (Ismanova, 2019) (Viet, 2021). Relevant to the
empirical results gap, this study is intended to analyze
and confirm the relationship between student
satisfaction and their loyalty to higher education as
part of higher education efforts to maintain long-term,
sustainable relationships with students.
2 METHODS
The study uses primary data obtained through a
survey of students at one of the private universities in
Bandung, Indonesia. Following the research
objectives, the variables of the study are Student
Loyalty as the dependent variable and Student
Satisfaction related to Non-Academic Aspects,
Values, Learning Process, Facilities, Academic
Aspects, Harmony, and Learning Outcomes as
independent variables.
The research indicators adapt previous research
(Austin & Pervaiz, 2017) (Orozco & Arroyo, 2017)
and are adjusted to current developments, according
to the Covid-19 pandemic situation that has caused
changes in the teaching and learning process. Each
research variable is measured using indicators that
form the basis for the preparation of questionnaires
distributed to respondents. The samples are active
students of the Business Faculty, with a total number
of respondents as many as 321 people.
The data collected is processed to obtain an
overview of student satisfaction and loyalty, as well
as to understand the role of student satisfaction in
determining their loyalty. Validity and reliability
testing were carried out for each variable and
indicator of the research variables. Multiple
regression or structural equation modeling (SEM) can
be used regarding the research objectives relating to
the relationship between variables. The two have
similarities, comparable to other multivariate
dependence techniques. The basic principle in SEM
is that one construct that becomes an independent
variable can be a dependent variable in another
relationship (Hair, Black, Babin, & Anderson, 2019).
In this study, there is a relationship between several
independent variables and a dependent variable.
Therefore, multiple regression analysis is used to
show the contribution of students' satisfaction related
to non-academic aspects, values, learning process,
facilities, academic aspects, harmony, and learning
outcomes towards their loyalty to their university of
choice. In this case, each indicator is measured using
a six-item scale from strongly disagree to strongly
agree which can be processed using multiple
regression since the variables are considered as
quantitative variables (Nayebi, 2020).
3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
From the data collection process conducted by
distributing questionnaires to students of the Business
Faculty, 321 data are collected, which are then tested
for their validity and reliability. The results of the test
show that each variable is reliable, with an Alpha
Cronbach value of 0.847 for the Student Loyalty
variable, and for the Satisfaction with Non-Academic
Aspects, Values, Learning Process, Facilities,
Academic Aspects, Harmony, and Learning
Outcomes variables are 0.841, 0.793, 0.844, 0.840,
0.889, 0.791, and 0.882, respectively. The results also
show that the item-to-total correlation score of each
item is between 0.512 – 0.803. Following Robinson's
recommendation as cited by (Hajjar, 2018), if the
score is more than 0.5, the validity is satisfied. Based
on the test results, all variables and indicators are
reliable and valid.
Descriptive statistic data regarding Students
Satisfaction shows that on average the students are
relatively satisfied (with a scale of approximately 5
out of 6) regarding Non-Academic Aspects, Values,
Learning Process, Facilities, Academic Aspects,
Harmony, and Learning Outcomes. Based on
descriptive analysis regarding Non-Academic
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Aspects and Values, students are the most satisfied
with administration officers’ capability to handle
problems regarding students’ academic and financial
issues and with the application of the smoking
regulations and restrictions in the campus area.
According to Learning Process, Facilities,
Academic Aspects, and Harmony aspects, university
students are the least satisfied with the subjects'
scheduling, laboratory availability, the up-to-date of
books and journals, exam result feedbacks, and
personal attention towards students. Regarding
Learning Outcomes, students are the most satisfied
with the competencies development in relevance to
the student’s field of study, despite the lowest score
of their willingness to take a different program or a
postgraduate program in the same university.
Table 1: p- values Results.
Variables
p
-value
Student Satisfaction with Non-Academic
Aspects
.001
Student Satisfaction with Values .615
Student Satisfaction with Learning
Process
.239
Student Satisfaction with Facilities .373
Student Satisfaction with Academic
Aspects
.508
Student Satisfaction with Harmon
y
.041
Student Satisfaction with Learning
Outcomes
.000
The data processing to find the determinants of
student loyalty is conducted using the multiple
regression method. The results show that the
regression would be able to predict Student Loyalty
with an F-value of 46.836 (Sig. 0.000), and Student
Satisfaction with Non-Academic Aspects, Values,
Learning Process, Facilities, Academic Aspects,
Harmony, and Learning Outcomes positively affect
Student Loyalty. Student Satisfaction regarding those
factors contributes towards Student Loyalty as much
as 50.1%. The results support previous researches that
showed positive effects of Student Satisfaction
towards Student Loyalty (Thomas, 2011) (Fernandes,
Ross, & Meraj, 2013) (Leonnard, Daryanto,
Sukandar, & Yusuf, 2014) (Giner & Rillo, 2016)
(Austin & Pervaiz, 2017; Austin & Pervaiz, 2017)
(Appuhamilage, 2019) (Paul & Pradhan, 2019)
(Pham, Limbu, Bui, Nguyen, & Pham, 2019), and that
university student’s satisfaction is the primary
determinant of their loyalty to their university
(Thomas, 2011). Other studies have confirmed that
student satisfaction has a strong impact on student
loyalty (Brown & Mazzarol, 2009) (Pham &
Williamson, 2018).
Partial testing showed that only Student
Satisfaction with Non-Academic Aspects, Harmony,
and Learning Outcomes variables affect Student
Loyalty with a p-value of 0.001, 0.041, and 0.000
respectively (Sig. < 0.05), as seen in Table 1. This
shows that for university students, non-academic
factors in fact more determine their loyalty compared
to academic aspects, facilities, or learning processes.
In addition, attention, equal opportunity and
treatment; and knowledge and skill development also
determine student loyalty to Higher Education
Institutions.
4 CONCLUSIONS
The result of the research indicates that overall
university students are satisfied regarding academic
aspects, non-academic aspects, learning process,
facilities provided by universities, value, harmony,
and learning outcome. According to data processes, it
is also found that university students have a relatively
strong loyalty towards their university. This is shown
with their willingness to communicate positive things
about the institution and recommend it to other people
who are enquiring.
Student’s satisfaction regarding said factors bears
positive effects on their loyalty to the Higher
Education institution. This shows that a satisfied
student will be loyal to his/her university. However,
partial testing shows that only Non-Academic
Aspects, Harmony, and Learning Outcomes variables
affect student’s loyalty. The universities should
concern not only with academic aspects, learning
process, and facilities. It is paramount for universities
to keep their students’ loyalty high due to its long-
term role in determining the continuity of a
university.
Based on the result of the study which shows the
contribution of Student Satisfaction towards Student
Loyalty, there are many opportunities for further
research with a focus on other different variables
relevant to student loyalty. In addition, the sample
size of the research can be expanded to further affirm
the applicability of the research model.
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