Market Orientation and Customer Experience are both constructs that belong to the world of business. It has now become necessary for universities to also embrace these business concepts in order to remain relevant and competitive, given the vast changes in Higher Education landscapes globally. Previous studies have looked at the relationship between Market Orientation and Customer Satisfaction. However, Customer Experience has not been identified as an antecedent to Market Orientation. This exploratory study posits that it is Customer Experience that influences Market Orientation at Higher Education institutions. Customer Satisfaction alone does not provide opportunities for students to be co-creators of their educational experiences. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine whether focusing on Customer Experience rather than just evaluating Customer Satisfaction levels can be a greater source of information to guide Market Orientation objectives and its implementation. The theoretical frameworks that guided the conceptual model of this study were the ResourceBased View and the Service-Dominant Logic theory. A cyclical relationship between Market Orientation and Customer Experience was proposed, with the nexus of this relationship being the concept of co-creation. A mixed methods convergent design approach was applied to collect data at a University of Technology in South Africa. The focus was on the postgraduate master's programme, and both research supervisors and master's students were part of the study sample. During the quantitative phase, data was collected via online surveys from 151 research supervisors, using purposive convenience sampling. Twenty-four master's students were interviewed using the critical incident technique method during the qualitative phase. Descriptive statistics together with Exploratory Factor Analysis were used to analyse the quantitative data, whilst qualitative data was coded and categorised into positive and negative incidents inductively in order to analyse the content to derive themes. The quantitative results and qualitative findings were merged to establish whether the results converged, augmented, differed, or were contradictory. The major contribution of this study is a cyclical model rather than a sequential model, where a positive relationship between Customer Experience and Market Orientation is possible, contingent on the institution's ability to promote co-creation initiatives amongst its key stakeholders. This study's findings reflect, that the stronger the level of Market Orientation practiced by supervisors, the more likely it is that the student experience would be positive, and the greater the impact on students' customer satisfaction levels. Co-creation initiatives vii between the university and all its stakeholders, especially students, were viewed as enhancing this relationship. This study reaffirms the roles of the institution, academics/employees and students in building and designing the customer experience at Higher Education institutions. The knowledge contribution of this study was the focus on Customer Experience and Market Orientation in the context of a developing country like South Africa, among others, given its unique economic, social and cultural structures. Furthermore, this study advances the importance of institutional reputation and research service experience in promoting a conducive environment that supports timely output of postgraduate students who can transfer their knowledge and skills into sectors of the South African economy. The methodological contribution of this study was the validation of the UNIVERSITY-I-MARKOR in the context of the developing world, highlighting the specific dimensions of Market Orientation that needed to be stimulated to enhance the student experience and the quality of the services provided by Higher Education institutions. Notably, areas for possible future research considerations were highlighted by this study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uct/oai:localhost:11427/38113 |
| Date | 14 July 2023 |
| Creators | Raja, Shameema Ebrahim |
| Contributors | Bick, Geoff |
| Publisher | Faculty of Commerce, Graduate School of Business (GSB) |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Doctoral Thesis, Doctoral, PhD |
| Format | application/pdf |
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