Abstract:

This paper has been elaborated with of the R+D National Plan SEJ2007-68105-C02-01 y 02/ECON Spanish Ministry of Education and Science and with FEDER funds

The university environment is experiencing important changes that have to be managed in order to ensure the universities’ competitiveness. In recent years, Spanish university institutions, as other, have had to face an increasingly competitive environment as well as an evolution of their stakeholders’ needs. In fact, there have been many changes in the socio-demographic characteristics of the students. In view of this environment, universities must identify these new customers and determine their needs in order to adapt to them. In other instance, the image portrayed by the institutions of Higher Education (HE) plays a critical role in the attitudes of the institution’s publics towards it.
Organizational image, satisfaction and loyalty are constructs of increasingly relevance for HE institutions and universities in particular.
In this context, this paper has a dual objective. On the one hand, it endeavours to analyse the direct influence of the university image as perceived by graduates on satisfaction and loyalty towards the institution where they obtain the degree. On the other hand, it attempts to analyse the relationship between the university image and loyalty, but mediated by the satisfaction experienced by students.
After a review of specific literature on corporate image, customer satisfaction and loyalty regarding higher education, three hypotheses are proposed, linking these constructs. To test it, an empirical analysis is developed. A survey was design to collect data from graduate students at Spanish universities. Structural equation modelling with latent variables is used to test the proposed model.
The model fits well and the findings enable to better understand students' satisfaction and one of its antecedents which is university image as well as a consequence, that is, loyalty. The model allows confirming the three hypotheses and results show how university image is a key element for achieving student satisfaction and their subsequent loyalty. It also shows the direct influence of university image on loyalty. Results of the study reveal that the level of student loyalty tends to be higher when perceptions of university image are strongly favourable. Moreover, the addition of a mediating construct such as satisfaction contributes to better explain this kind of loyalty.
To conclude, these constructs are key variables influencing the university performance. The generic model and associated measurement instruments can reliably and consistently be applied for different studies and institutions, and will provide useful information for comparisons between study programmes and institutions against continuous quality improvement. The appropriate management of the determinants of satisfaction is vital to the strategic decisions of universities.
This study contributes to the body of knowledge of relationship marketing and corporate image by empirically testing the nature of the relationship between corporate image and their effects on the customers' satisfaction and loyalty and it shows that these three topics are of real importance also in the HE sphere.
It would be appropriate to expand the research to other institutions of higher education in order to generalize the results.

Keywords:

student satisfaction, student loyalty, higher education, university image.