Does LibQUAL+TM account for student loyalty to a university college library?
| Published date | 27 September 2011 |
| Pages | 413-440 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09684881111170104 |
| Date | 27 September 2011 |
| Author | Øyvind Helgesen,Erik Nesset |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Does LibQUAL1
TM
account for
student loyalty to a university
college library?
Øyvind Helgesen and Erik Nesset
Aalesund University College, Aalesund, Norway
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to find out whether LibQUAL þ
TM
can account for student
loyalty to the library of an institution of higher education. LibQUAL þ
TM
is a marketing tool that is
used to measure perceived service quality of libraries, and the present analysis aims at validating this
service quality instrument within a more comprehensive theoretical satisfaction-image-loyalty
framework.
Design/methodology/approach – The data source is a survey among students at the bachelor’s
level of a university college in Norway. The analysis is based on structural equation modelling.
Findings – The three LibQUAL drivers (information control, affect of service and library as a place)
account for 85 per cent of the variation in student loyalty.
Research limitations/implications – This research has been applied to a specific university
college. The research should be expanded to other institutions offering higher education.
Practical implications – The study gives practical insight to managers regarding drivers of
student loyalty for decision making and strategic control. The library as a place has the greatest
impact on loyalty in this study.
Originality/value – Relationship marketing and management have become increasingly important
for higher education managers. By identifying drivers of student loyalty regarding image building and
satisfaction creation, and by allocating resources to activities that are important forstudents regarding
these two processes, managers may obtain increased student retention, thus helping to ensure future
public funding.
Keywords Higher education, Image building, LibQUALþ, Relationshipmanagement,
Satisfactioncreation, Student loyalty, Educationlibraries, Norway
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Due to rapid changes in the global educational landscape implying an increase in both
student transfer and dropout rates the focus on student retention and loyalty has
recently increased (Tinto, 1993; Kotler and Fox, 1995; Hennig-Thurau et al., 2001;
Nesset and Helgesen, 2009). Some of these changes have been spurred by important
international processes (e.g. the Bologna Process) and national reforms to enhance and
facilitate student and teacher mobility by removing obstacles and improving the
international recognition of degrees and academic qualifications. The fact that
university education has now become much more common, has also led to a much
larger diversity of the students’ qualifications than earlier, which naturally will
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The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on an earlier
version of this paper.
LibQUAL þ
TM
and student
loyalty
413
Received February 2011
Revised May 2011
Accepted June 2011
Quality Assurance in Education
Vol. 19 No. 4, 2011
pp. 413-440
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0968-4883
DOI 10.1108/09684881111170104
influence the dropout rates (Hovdhaugen, 2009). In addition, the funding system for
higher education institutions has changed over the last few years. Government funding
is becoming scarcer and more complex, and performance is increasingly emphasized
when public funds are allocated to the various organizational areas of education
institutions (Arnaboldi and Azzone, 2005; DeShields et al., 2005; Helgesen and Nesset,
2007a). Government financing is often partly based on the production of student credits
and professional degrees. Thus, insights into student loyalty and its drivers should be
of great importance when determining the most appropriate management strategies.
Student loyalty can be related to two important value-creation processes: image
building and satisfaction creation (Bloemer and de Ruyter, 1998; Helgesen and Nesset,
2007a). While satisfaction creation is perceived as having the most to say regarding
student retention, image building is looked upon as essential both for attracting and
retaining students; thus, image building and satisfaction creation are linked pro cesses
(Johnson et al., 2001; Hel gesen et al., 2010). However, satisfaction and image are only
mediating variables of the drivers of student loyalty. The challenge is therefore to
identify and implement an appropriate strategy based on a profound understanding of
the adjustable variables, antecedents or attributes that have a favourable effect on
student attitudes (Pan and Zinkhan, 2006; Helgesen, 2008). The performance of
libraries at institutions of higher education may play an important role in student
retention, suggesting that managers need insight with respect to the quality of service
offered by their library (Duffy et al., 2008; Saunders, 2008; Brochado, 2009). By
allocating resources to activities that are important to students, managers may
increase the student value offered, thus increasing student loyalty and ensuring
increased government funding in the future (Nesset and Helgesen, 2009).
The main purpose of this paper is to find out whether LibQUAL þ
TM
can document
the reasons behind student loyalty to the library of an institution offering higher
education. LibQUAL þ
TM
is a marketing tool that is used to measure the perceived
service quality of libraries (Bower and Dennis, 2007; Green and Kyrillidou, 2010), as
further elaborated below. This paper includes the three service quality dimensions of
LibQUAL þ
TM
(affect of service, information control and library as a place) in a
satisfaction-image-loyalty research model of a library (Nesset and Helgesen, 2009;
Helgesen et al., 2010). In addition, positive affect and negative affect are included in the
model as mediating variables, and demographics (age and gender) as control variables.
Thus an additional purpose is to validate the LibQUAL instrument in an elaborated
theoretical framework. As far as we know this is the first study that uses a
satisfaction-image-loyalty research model of a library for this purpose. This validation
involves the testing of relationships between the mediating variables of the research
model (positive affect, negative affect, satisfaction and image), as well as between
image and loyalty and also between satisfaction and loyalty. Two research questions
are addressed:
RQ1. Do LibQUAL drivers (information control, affect of service, and library as a
place) account for student loyalty?
RQ2. What kind of impacts do LibQUAL drivers have on satisfaction, image, and
ultimately student loyalty to the library?
In order to answer these interrelated questions, a study applying structural equation
modelling is chosen. LISREL (SEM) is used because this analysis is a crossover study,
QAE
19,4
414
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