A consumer analysis of service provision offered by a university to its resident students in South Africa

Abstract

The accommodation services sector has emerged as one of the highly demanded service industries in South Africa. The objectives of the study were: To investigate empirically if resident students (customers) are satisfied with the services (accommodation) provided by the University. Secondly, to investigate empirically the perception of resident students (customers) on the use of relationship marketing by the management of the university with respect to accommodation, and thirdly, to investigate empirically if resident students (customers) are loyal to the accommodation services provided by the University. The research used the simple random sampling method. Self-administered questionnaire was utilised for data collection and a sample of 140 respondents was used to obtain information about consumer perceptions and expected levels of accommodation services. The chi-square goodness of fit, T-test and ANOVA were used for data analysis. The research findings indicated that, customers are not satisfied with services provided by the University residence management; there is no relationship marketing and customers are not loyal to the services provided by the University. The results obtained from the survey indicated that, customer relationship marketing is important for service delivery and enhances the ability of the management to effectively deliver on service provision resulting in enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty. Key words: Relationship marketing, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty.