Service Quality Evaluation in the Higher Education Sector: An Empirical Investigation of Students' Perceptions

This paper investigates the conceptualisation and measurement of service quality within the higher education sector in Western Australia (WA). It addresses the prominence of the service quality issue within this sector and the move toward high value service delivery as a means of ensuring sustainable competitive advantage. It reports the findings from an exploratory study of student perceptions of service quality as they relate to an on-line library service offered by a public sector university in WA. The study makes use of the importance-performance disconfirmation technique. The results reveal both the core service quality dimensions of significance to students in using this service and demonstrate the usefulness and relative simplicity of disconfirmation models generally, for evaluating the service quality construct in the higher education context.

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