Consumer attitude towards service failure and recovery in higher education
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/QAE-07-2013-0029 |
| Date | 02 February 2015 |
| Published date | 02 February 2015 |
| Pages | 67-85 |
| Author | Hardeep Chahal,Pinkey Devi |
| Subject Matter | Education,Curriculum, instruction & assessment,Educational evaluation/assessment |
Consumer attitude towards
service failure and recovery in
higher education
Hardeep Chahal and Pinkey Devi
Post Graduate Department of Commerce, University of Jammu, Jammu, India
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to explore consumer attitude towards service failure and recovery in the
higher education in general and with respect to teaching, examination, library, computer lab,
administration and infrastructure in particular.
Design/methodology/approach – The data are collected from 120 students of three undergraduate
colleges of University of Jammu using purposive sampling.
Findings – The ndings reveal that all recovery efforts pertaining to teaching, examination, library,
computer lab, administration and infrastructure are signicant in overcoming the respective service
failures.
Research limitations/implications – The present study is limited to address service failure and
service recovery relationship with respect to teaching, examination, library, computer lab,
administration and infrastructure and limited to three undergraduate colleges operating in Jammu city
only. The sample of the study is small which needs to be considered before generalizing the results.
Originality/value – This study makes a maiden attempt to identify service failure issues with respect
to teaching, examination, library, computer lab, administration and infrastructure using quantitative
methodology in higher education and role of service recovery strategies in monitoring and reducing
service failure.
Keywords Teaching, Higher education, Infrastructure, Examination, Service failure, Library,
Consumer attitude, Service recovery, Administration, Computer lab
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Researchers have empirically examined service failure and recovery within a wide array
of sectors such as banking, health care, retail, etc. However, higher education is one of
the areas which has been relatively neglected in service failure and recovery literature
and needed to be investigated (Swanson and Davis, 2000;Voss, 2009 and Voss et al.,
2010). Various researchers, such as Hoffman et al. (1995),Hocutt et al. (2006),Dalziel et al.
(2011) and Edvardson et al. (2011), also pointed out that there is a need to investigate
service failure and service recovery in the sectors where human interactions play an
important role, such as education. In addition, Voss et al. (2010) specically advocated
the need to study service failure and service recovery in the education sector for building
service failure and recovery literature. Along with this, Hart and Coates (2011) remarked
that future research need to be undertaken using some qualitative methodology for
deeper understanding of the attitude of students towards service failure, recovery and
complaining. Finally, Iyer and Muncy (2008) in their study underscored that future
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
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Service failure
and recovery
in higher
education
67
Received 3 July 2013
Revised 28 May 2014
Accepted 3 June 2014
QualityAssurance in Education
Vol.23 No. 1, 2015
pp.67-85
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0968-4883
DOI 10.1108/QAE-07-2013-0029
research on service failure and recovery in education sector needs to be extended with
some different methodological approach.
In this competitive environment, where students have many options opened to them,
factors that enable institutions to attract and retain students are required to be seriously
studied (Hart and Coates, 2011), as the list of mistakes/errors (i.e. service failures)
possible in higher education is limitless and how an institution responds to them (i.e.
service recovery) is very crucial (Iyer and Muncy, 2008). According to Swanson and
Davis (2000),Voss (2009) and Voss et al. (2010), there are broadly three types of service
failures that occur in the higher education sector that include professor’s response to
service delivery system failures; unfullled needs and requests of the students; and rude
or impolite behaviour of the teaching/non-teaching staff in the institutions.
To deal effectively with service failures in higher education, it is very important for
all the educational institutions, not only to analyse all types of service failures carefully
but also to check and monitor behavioural responses of the students from time to time.
These behavioural responses or complaints from dissatised students can give
institutions chance to learn and to minimise the occurrence of future service failures
(through effective implementations of service recovery strategies). To deal with
dissatised behavioural responses of the students, effective complaint handling is one of
the most important tools in the hands of service providers (Matos et al., 2009). It is well
known that complaints when handled properly can help in reducing damaging
word-of-mouth criticism, and improving consumer trust, commitment and retention
(Brown, 2000 and Voss, 2009) and improving teaching and learning experience in the
education sector (Hart and Coates, 2011).
Based on the signicance of the service failure and recovery in education sector and
extant void in the service marketing literature, the present paper makes an endeavour to
analyse consumer attitude towards service failure and recovery in the higher education
in general and with respect to teaching, examination, library, computer lab,
administration and infrastructure in particular. The organisation of paper is as follows.
At the outset, the conceptual framework of service failure and recovery is discussed
followed by consumer attitude toward service failure and service recovery. The research
framework along with hypotheses is discussed in the next section. Afterwards, the
research methodology is presented. The next following sections relate with exploratory
factor analysis and hypotheses testing. The discussion followed by conclusion and
implications are presented next. The paper concludes with limitations and future
research.
Conceptual framework
Service failure and service recovery
Service failure is primarily dened as a mismatch between service performance and
consumers’ expectation. In other words, service failure occurs when consumers are
dissatised with service or when performance/quality of product falls below their
expectations (Lewis and Spyrakopoulas, 2001 and Gye-Soo, 2007). The success of any
educational institution primarily depends on the efforts of both students as consumers
and teachers/non-teaching staff of the concerned staff as service providers (Cooper,
2007). High involvement and continuous interaction between students, teachers and
non-teaching staff may result in a gap between service performance and consumer
expectation. Such service failure may relate to teaching, examination, library,
QAE
23,1
68
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