Student Expectations on Service Quality as a Determinant of Service Planning and Marketing for Higher Education Institutions in Tanzania

Introduction

Understanding students’ expectations regarding service quality are very important in the marketing of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Marketing of HEIs cannot be detached from common marketing terminologies, considering an unavoidable relationship between customers/consumers and suppliers/providers (Nedbalová et al., 2014). Equally, the relationship between students as consumers of services and HEIs as providers of services cannot be evaded. However, the significant difference between marketing in the business industry and marketing of educational services is reflected by the time taken by service customers in contact with service providers. While the contact between consumers in the normal economic market is temporal and unregistered, the contact between students and HEIs follows procedural actions such as application, selection, admission, registration of customers and may take over three years in a relationship.

Different marketing models and theories have been used to study the existing relationship between students, services, and duration of contact with offering HEIs. For example, Relationship Marketing (RM) model explain a set of marketing activities that potentially motivate, attract and focus on retention of enrolled students to the end of the duration of the study and attract other prospective students to the same institution (Helgesen, 2008). Students Integration Theory, as stipulated by Tinto in 1993, describe students’ academic and social progression within the defined duration of the study (Chrysikos et al., 2016; Robinson & Bornholt, 2007; Tinto, 2015). In addition, a fundamental SERVQUAL model, as articulated by Parasuraman et al., (1985, 1994), has been used to account for students’ expectations while in contact with HEIs.

Consumer behaviour about choices made by service providers regarding inputs, outputs, and outcomes of HEIs dictates students to pursue studies at the university of preferences. Given this assumption, Higher Education (HE) institutional planning about Academic-Consultation Services (ACS) and Technical-Residential Services (TRS) has become essential components for marketing, attracting, enrolling, retaining, and engaging prospective university students. HEIs can use both ACS and TRS planning to influence enrolled students, who are also likely to affect prospective students to enroll or otherwise evict prospective students from intention to enroll. In addition, the marketing of HEIs is a vital strategy to sustain and ensure proper institutional management and planning in the face of global competitions for meeting customers’ expectations as affected by frequent changes of technologies, internationalization, globalization, and competitiveness. Considering the changing global context, the then former President of the United Republic of Tanzania, His excellence Ali Hassan Mwinyi, emphatically echoed: