Perceived quality by higher education students: effects from class size, gender and experience of use
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/1983-4535.2021.e76356Abstract
This study intends to investigate the relationships between perceived quality in private Higher Education and class size, gender, and experience of use (i.e.: service consumption duration). Following a quantitative approach, a survey was employed to gather data from a sample of 1,379 students from three large Brazilian Higher Education Institutions (HEI). Results from a Mann-Whitney’s U test indicate a significant negative relationship between perceived quality and class size. Additionally, senior students' perceived quality is significantly lower than first-year students' perceptions of service quality. On the other hand, although female's average perceptions showed higher results than male's in all quality dimensions, no significance between perceived quality and gender was detected. The study highlights the potential impact of relevant items on HEI's service perceived quality and consumer behavior debate by covering current academic gaps on some of the variables' relationships analyses. HEIs can use these findings to improve their future strategic decisions, including valuable inputs to face current and future challenges, such as the need for operational and financial improvements and the management of the complex balance between the class size trends and service's perceived quality.
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