Imperatives of service innovation and service quality for customer satisfaction: Perspective on higher education

Abstract

Innovation, which hitherto, was used as a term to exclusively explain development in new technologies in the manufacturing sector, has now found an increasing usage and application in the service sector.. The advent of globalisation, has led to demographic changes and changes in technology. Similarly, service innovation has become significant and pose challenges not only to profit-oriented businesses, but also to non-profit organisations like higher education institutions, thus, requiring a ‘disruptive’ approach to innovation in the sector, with a view of targeting new customer groups, as well as enhancing service quality excellence to ensure satisfaction. Often, innovation creates large pool of new customers, such as new students in the case of higher education institutions and fulfilling the new expectations of current customers. Therefore, this conceptual paper seek to look at issues connected to service innovation, its characteristics and implications within the context of higher education institutions, particularly technological universities, so that new value propositions can be developed and utilised for service quality enhancement, positioning and gaining competitive advantage in the higher education marketplace. Conclusions were made regarding the implication for service innovation in fostering customer satisfaction.