Abstract
English is often considered to be the international language of commerce and, more recently, e-commerce. English is also the predominant language of the internet, science, and many, the language of higher education. As a result, English tutoring institutions are thriving in the Chinese Mainland in recent years in a substantial and competitive market. The objective of this chapter is to reveal what are the factors that affect Chinese college students' selection of English tutoring institutions in China so that tutoring institution managers may focus on the most important criteria for their prospective customers. In this chapter, 212 Chinese college students participated in the online survey. The authors analyzed the correlation between purchase intention and price, brand image, service variety, and customer relationship. Through data analysis, they show that price, brand image, service variety, and customer relationships are all positively associated with Chinese college students' purchase intention of English tutoring institutions.
TopLiterature Review - Background
Purchase Intention
Purchase intention is defined as the possibility that consumers will purchase the product or service (Sam & Tahir, 2009). Information quality, perceived price, brand image and trust factors are considered to be crucial and influential factors toward purchase intention (Bonsón Ponte et al., 2015; Erdil, 2015; D. J. Kim et al., 2008; J. N. K. Liu & Zhang, 2014).
Product Price
Price, as an attribute of a product, plays an important role in a product. Price in the marketplace is determined by the interaction between the force of supply and the force of demand (Dodds et al., 1991). In particular, many online products/services are intangible (Alkibsi & Lind, 2011). Given a product/service, consumers evaluate the appropriateness of the price based on its quality, and this perceived price is also directly related to consumers value and purchase intentions (Chiang & Jang, 2007). Previous research on tutoring has suggested that tutoring in Malaysia (Wan & Weerasena, 2017), and Cambodia (Bray et al., 2018) is seen as an inevitable component of education, but has not explored the impact of price on consumer choice. Similarly, geography and the urban/rural divide has been shown to influence price for tutoring, but has not explored the impact of pricing on demand (Kobakhidze, 2018). Liu and Bray (2020) have found that parents in Myanmar associated lower prices for tutoring with lower quality.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Service Variety: The consumer evaluation of the service variety offered by firms.
Customer Relationship: The interaction between firms and their customers that can influence customer repurchase intention, perception of brand, and offer firms protection from competitors.
English Tutoring Institutions: The tutoring industry, sometimes referred to as “shadow education,” that provides private education services for consumers interested in learning English.
Perceived Quality: Customer perceptions of excellence in a product or service.
Purchase Intention: The possibility that a customer will purchase a product or service.
Southern China: The region of China south of the Yangtze River.
Price: An attribute of a product determined by the forces of supply and demand.