Outcomes of entrepreneurship education in China: A customer experience management perspective

Abstract

Although important to business and economic development, entrepreneurship education has offered its customers (i.e., students) mixed experiences. While some prior studies find entrepreneurship education to have a positive effect on entrepreneurial attitude or activities, others report the opposite, suggesting the need to consider environmental factors. Drawing on the nascent research on customer experience management, this study treats entrepreneurship education as a service product and advocates that service providers take a “touchpoint journey view” in that the providers should manage or influence all touchpoints in the environment—some touchpoints are internal to the providers, while others may be external. This perspective leads to a comprehensive conceptual model that identifies ten student-resource touchpoints across three areas: a) curricular b) regulatory environment, and c) social environment resources. With a unique sample of students who are systematically exposed to all three types of resources through a pilot entrepreneurship program, this study finds empirical evidence to support the proposed model. These findings offer pertinent implications to entrepreneurship education design (e.g., totality of various touchpoints). In addition, with the rising influence of the Chinese economy, this study also represents a meaningful step toward a better understanding of consumers' service goods experience in this strategically important market.