SERVMO: A Measure for Service-Driven Market Orientation in Higher Education

Abstract

ABSTRACT With the intensified pace of globalization and increasing customer expectations, the higher education sector, like other economy sectors, faces increasing competition in terms of serving customers better. Service has been recognized as an effective tool for a competitive advantage. Thus, there is always a need for a more effective way of improving service, specifically in higher education. For this, a strategic and service-oriented marketing construct that is empirically operationalized and tested is deemed necessary. However, this measure of customer-perceived market orientation for service has yet to be developed for academic and practical purposes. This paper presents the scale development for a service-driven market orientation (SERVMO) in higher education using data from Malaysian institutions of higher learning. The perceptions of senior students were analyzed and the results show that the proposed multi-dimensional construct consists of six components, namely customer orientation, competitor orientation, inter-functional orientation, performance orientation, long-term orientation, and employee orientation. This construct is closely correlated with service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Some key implications and future research are also discussed.