Related Studies

Maritime Students’ Satisfaction on the Services Rendered by the Canteen

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The LIMA students are satisfied on the different services offered by the LIMA canteen. The LIMA students
agree to the problems encountered on the services rendered by the LIMA canteen. A proposed plan of action
was formulated to address the problems encountered by the students. It is recommended that the canteen
personnel may attend seminars related to food services in order to gain more knowledge on how they can
improve their services. The canteen management may conduct a monthly maintenance of their facilities. The
canteen management may post list of rules and regulations, such as self-busing, and proper disposal and
segregation of garbage, which will help them improve the orderliness and cleanliness of the canteen. A parallel
study may be conducted applying other variables.
THE LINK BETWEEN STUDENTS’ SATISFACTION WITH FACULTY, OVERALL STUDENTS’
SATISFACTION WITH STUDENT LIFE AND STUDENT PERFORMANCES
CONCLUSIONS
The main goal of this study was to determination the extent to which certain factors of life, both general and
student life, affect the overall satisfaction with the studying experience and how this is connected with students
performances. The survey was conducted among the students of the University of Split, a total of 191.
Students’ satisfaction is becoming an increasingly important variable in the success of an educational
institution because the reputation of the institution and the number of prospective students enrolled depends
on it. Faculties must be willing to introduce changes in order to become more competitive. It is crucial that
faculties invest in knowledge, i.e. in teacher training, teaching methods, faculty facilities, and so on. In this
research it has been found that the greater the students’ satisfaction with their faculty facilities, faculty bodies,
and faculty services, the greater the overall satisfaction with student life is. We observed the effects of the
following factors on the satisfaction with student life: library staff, reserving a place for studying, organization of
library materials on the shelves, availability of learning materials, availability of computers, infolab staff, the
Internet speed, equipment quality, age of computers, availability of parking, sports and recreational facilities,
and purchase of books and other materials. The variable that influences the satisfaction with student life mostis
the purchase of books and other materials. The variable that has no influences on satisfaction with student life
is the Internet speed. The said points to the fact that additional facilities at the faculties represent an important
item of impact on students’ satisfaction. Students spend more time in libraries and infolabs and widely use the
stores where they can get the necessary books and teaching materials. Timely investment in these segments
will ensure a positive image of the faculty, and the students will be more willing to replace their homes with the
very faculty as a place for learning, and preparing seminar and other papers. Likewise, we have rejected the
claim that the greater students’ satisfaction with housing, the greater their overall satisfaction with student life
is. Although it was expected that the satisfaction with accommodation affects the satisfaction with the quality of
student life, the analysis did not show this, perhaps mostly because the majority of the respondents lived with
their parents. Students are satisfied with student life when their faculty is adequately equipped with the
technology necessary for teaching, and when there is a good interaction between the teachers and students in
class. Students are also satisfied with the quality of student life when they trust that the reputation of their
faculty is positive and that the reputation of their teachers is also positive. The said points to the fact that
faculties must systematically invest in the technology needed to carry out high quality teaching, as well as in
their own staff through the opportunities of teacher training and familiarizing the teachers with the new
opportunities of working and communicating with students. It is certain that more changes will be introduced in
the forthcoming years, and that teachers and faculties will have to be ready to adapt to the changes in the
education system in order to make their students more satisfied. Ultimately, it has been found that higher
students’ satisfaction with student life has an impact on students’ better performance. When analysing the
impact of students’ satisfaction with the quality of student life on their performance, we observed the variables
of the regularity of completing the years of study, mastering the knowledge, acquiring the faculty curriculum,
and the general success at the faculty. The acquisition of the faculty curriculum had a slightly greater impact
than the general success at the faculty. Looking at the analysis of the satisfaction with the quality of student life
in relation to the faculties, there were several conclusions. Certain students from the Faculty of Humanities and
Social Sciences, Faculty of Law, and Faculty of Chemistry and Technology were the only ones who assessed
their satisfaction with the quality of student life with the grade insufficient, so it can be said that these faculties
have to work mostly on their reputation and quality in order to achieve a greater satisfaction of their students.
The faculties that demonstrated a kind of “golden mean”, the majority of whose students assessed their
satisfaction with the quality of student life with the grade good, are the Faculty of Maritime Studies, School of
Medicine, and Faculty of Science. These faculties must surely also work on improving their quality and
reputation in order to ensure a greater satisfaction of their students. The faculties awarded the highest grades
(very good and excellent) by the students were the Faculty of Kinesiology, Faculty of Economics, Faculty of
Civil engineering, Architecture and Geodesy, and Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical engineering
and Naval Architecture as 50% or more of their students assessed their faculties with the grade very good and
excellent. These results confirm the assumption that all faculties must work to keep pace with new
technologies, and invest in their teachers and other staff, and then in the faculty facilities that include libraries,
IT labs, and sports and recreational facilities. Regardless of the fact that the hypothesis on the satisfaction with
housing was rejected, it is still necessary to invest in the quality of student dormitories. All the mentioned
variables will have an impact on the further student performance at the faculties. The future also provides an
opportunity to conduct a similar research at all the universities in Croatia, as well as to observe other relevant
factors of satisfaction, particularly those of more personal nature (religion, extracurricular activities, relationship
with other students, health, etc.)

Level of satisfaction among postgraduate health sciences students on the cafeteria facilities in
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur Campus

CONCLUSIONS
As the perceptions on importance of customer satisfaction have grown in the business world, studies on
customer satisfaction have no longer limited in commercial restaurant setting but also institutional campus
establishment. This study determined the customer satisfaction based on the Institutional DINESERV
Dimension revealed that the service and ambience attributes are the two major contributors of dissatisfaction in
UKM, KL cafeteria among postgraduates; nevertheless, the food quality, price and portion were more inclined
toward satisfaction. They were not satisfied with the factor such as sufficiency and cleanliness of eating utensil,
efficiency of food preparation, facilities, as well as comfortable level of dining area which related to the services
and ambience attributes rendered by the operators. The negative impressions on these attributes have given
significant impact not only to postgraduates but also to the operators and UKM as a whole. Postgraduates
probably will decide to find alternative Cafeteria facilities dining unit for their long-term basic needs. For the
operators, they will probably start losing postgraduates as their customers and sustainability of their business
profit will be affected if operators continuously ignored the poor service and ambience attributes in their
cafeteria. This result provide a good implications to the food service operators that immediate solutions should
be taken by those directly responsible on the overall operations of the main campus cafeteria. The cafeterias’
operators should pay more attention to postgraduate dissatisfaction. UKM has the right to terminate their
services or issue stern warnings to the operators if food service operators were unable to provide the
acceptable of four attributes: food beverages, services, operating environment, price and portion in their dining
unit or cafeteria according to the existing guidelines. The performance appraisal should be done frequently by
the officer in charge. Most importantly, a stringent screening test must be carried out by UKM officer, not only
by looking at the ability, experience of the operators but also cross-referencing their performance with other
food service operators in similar setting when it comes to the point to renew their contract or services. As a
research university, UKM should develop a standard protocol in combating the above mentioned issues for the
benefit of postgraduates as stakeholders. Hence, postgraduates not only will feel comfortable during their
study in UKM but also provide nutritious and quality food, as well as good dining experience which are crucial
for postgraduates to excel in their study performance.
The Impact of Service Quality on Students’ Satisfaction in Higher Education Institutes of Punjab
Discussion & Conclusions
The present study aims at exploring the impact of service quality on students’ satisfaction in higher education
institutes of Punjab. The results show that the service quality greatly influences the students’ satisfaction in
multiple dimensions. The essence of students’ satisfaction lies in the quality of teaching and learning
environment of institution as students demand the well qualified, learned and experienced faculty for their
academic and professional development. The students want to be teached by those teachers whose
knowledge, expertise, liberality and reasonability up to the mark. The teaching methodologies and
understanding with course and tasks with a friendly attitude of teaching are the key factors affecting the
academic environment of an institution. The tangible facilities like class setup, digital labs and libraries, quality
and reliability of the infrastructure and other assured facilities do contribute in creating the image of excellence.
We posited five hypotheses all of which are accepted. The structural equation modeling results have shown
that the dimensions of service quality have a significant impact on the students satisfactory level. The overall
model is a reasonable fit showing that the tangibility, assurance, reliability and empathy have a strong and
significant impact on the students’ satisfaction from an institution. The results also showed that the
cooperation, kindness of administrative staff and the responsiveness of the educational system play a vital role
in retaining the students’ interest as the administration should be responsible in providing all the essentials and
necessities required progressive learning environment. The students seek the feelings of empathy, nobleness
and kindness in their institute’s administrative staff. Therefore the administration should be careful in training
the employees in order to come up to the expectations of the students. In addition to the learning environment
there are certain otheressential facilities which are also important for the students i.e. the well managed
cafeteria, parking facilities, play grounds and other arrangements of physical and mental health e.g. clubs,
gymnasiums etc. Assuring all the facilities and quality of services with excellence and reliability, an institution
can attract a lot of students by having its name in the leading educational institutions of learning.

Service Quality in Higher Education Using an Enhanced SERVQUAL Approach

Conclusions
As attention to service quality in higher education heightens, there needs to be a correspondent increase in the
use of its assessment tools. This research began with the basic SERVQUAL survey instrument. It gathered
literature about student perceptions and expectations. From surveys that have been developed and validated
over the last decade, a modest amount of further customization was done to fit the survey instrument to the
Singapore context. From this was formed a broad-ranging survey covering service quality in 76 different areas.
The use of the internet for sending out and receiving returns provided an efficient means of administering the
survey. Data collation for later analysis was greatly aided also. A main purpose of the survey was to provide
information on service quality gaps. A range of demographic profiling was done, for example, compare first- to
final-year students, local versus foreign students, undergraduates versus graduate students. The results from
such a survey can be used to identify areas of priority. The use of stepwise regression provides a second level
of analysis in identifying the significance of individual attributes to overall student satisfaction. The use of the
satisfaction grid tells where to put one’s efforts based on what students deem to be of high importance. The
above analyses provide information useful for university administrators in decision making. The focus of this
research had been on both the acculturated survey as well as the derived methodology.

Linking student satisfaction and service quality perceptions: the case of university education
Conclusions
Delivering quality service has become an important goal for most higher education institutions. Practitioners
often assume that quality service is the same as consumer satisfaction. This paper is an attempt to clarify the
conceptual definitions of these two variables. Perceived service quality is defined as an overall evaluation of
the goodness or badness of a product or service. In other words, it is an attitude. Consumer satisfaction is
similar to attitude, but it is short-term and results from an evaluation of a specific consumption experience. This
exercise of clarifying the conceptual definitions of the constructs has resulted in a model of service quality and
consumer satisfaction for higher education services (see Figures 2 and 3). An empirical test of the model
provided in Figure 3 shows that perceived quality is an important influence on students’ post-enrolment
communication behaviour. A limitation of this study is the high correlation between post-enrolment “consumer
satisfaction” and “perceived quality” measures. This is not surprising, since both the constructs were measured
at one point in time: i.e. post-enrolment. Moreover, according to the theoretical arguments presented earlier,
(dis)satisfaction with the service encounter at time t will have a higher influence on perceived quality than
(dis)satisfaction with the earlier t – i service encounters. It may be possible to discriminate between the two
constructs by limiting satisfaction scale items to tap (dis)satisfaction with specific service encounters. This is
area for further research. The approach to measuring “expectations” and “disconfirmation” adopted in this
research can also provide other useful information to institutional researchers. Specifically, each of the eight
services/service characteristic items of the expectation and disconfirmation measures could be cross-tabulated
with demographic variables such as students’ gender, course of study, etc. to understand differences in
perceptions, if any, among different segments of the student population. Finally, it is hoped that this paper
would stimulate more research into the antecedents and consequences of service quality. Specifically, Figure 3
should include all the variables discussed in Figure 2 and this expanded model should be tested on a high
involvement service with less than two years of consumption time. An example of such a service would be an
executive program offered by a university. These programs usually run for a month or two. Note that such a
test will reduce, if not eliminate, the influences of extraneous variables on perceived post-consumption quality.

USE OF THE SERVICE ATTRIBUTE MATRIX TO MEASURE CONSUMER SATISFACTION

Conclusions
The purpose of the study was to test the concept of the service attribute matrix for measuring customer
satisfaction/dissatisfaction in a university cafeteria. The method proposed by Albrecht and Bradford (1990)
appears to be valuable in identifying the attributes that are most important to customer satisfaction in a
cafeteria. The service attribute matrix may be useful for institutional foodservices, small service companies, or
restaurants. With the information provided by such a model, management can adjust product and service
quality, as well as promotional strategies to its market. Target market segments may be determined from
demographic information gathered in the questionnaire. In this study of a cafeteria foodservice, competitive
strengths were found for all meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) in quality of food, cleanliness, convenient
location, and nutritious food categories, whereas a competitive vulnerability in the price charged category was
found for two of the meals (lunch and dinner). Suggested management strategies for enhancing competitive
ability include: delivering competitive strength attributes consistently; improving the performance on price range
and variety of menu as soon as possible; and raising the performance of the medium attributes to an A level.
The service attribute matrix appears to be a useful tool in evaluation of customer satisfaction. One limitation to
the current study, however, was the bias introduced in sampling. The sample population might not have
included those customers who are dissatisfied with the service or products provided in the cafeteria. The
customers who eat most frequently in the cafeteria probably tend to be more satisfied with the attributes tested.
As a result, the level of satisfaction score might be better than the actual reaction.