Abstract
Purpose – The study analyzes the key drivers of consumer experience in e-services, with the particular goal of defining and quantifying the influence of website quality and university brand assessments on the experience of consumers who are students of a virtual university . Theoretical framework – To carry out the research we analyzed website quality , brand , and customer experience Design/methodology/approach – We carried out a statistical analysis using structural equation modeling of web-based questionnaires collected from 306 postgraduate students of a virtual university . Findings – Our research reveals that the university’s brand is the most influential factor. In contrast, the influence exerted by the web environment is lower. Of the three website dimensions, the quality of the system exerts the greatest influence, followed by relationship quality, which is moderated by the role of university staff. Research, p ractical , and s ocial implications – We propose that the quality of a virtual classroom (quality of the system, quality of information, and service quality), together with students ' individual assessments of the brand, determine the students ' experience as consumers of this service. The brand assessment is the most important factor.
Highlights
The intensive use of information and communication technologies (ICT) has revolutionized university education, in terms of both its operations and the strategic orientation that defines its management
The only criterion that is applicable in partial least squares (PLS) is that the average variance extracted (AVE) for each factor must be greater than the square of the correlation between any other pair of factors (Ab Hamid et al, 2017)
Concepts such as customer experience, with their high relevance for the design of strategic marketing in both physical and online environments, can help in the effective management of academic institutions too
Summary
The intensive use of information and communication technologies (ICT) has revolutionized university education, in terms of both its operations and the strategic orientation that defines its management. To survive and consolidate their positions, universities increasingly adopt a stakeholder orientation, in which the student, as the consumer of the academic services provided, represents the center of university activity (González-Marcos et al, 2016). This growing orientation has meant an understanding of student satisfaction is fundamental for university management (Datu & Mateo, 2015). It is the students who enable educational institutions to exist and endure, so their satisfaction is a primary consideration and should reduce their likelihood of leaving or changing universities
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