Measuring customer satisfaction in summer courses

Abstract

Purpose

The recent changes that have occurred in the Spanish university teaching environment, such as growing competition, have caused these courses to become an important differentiating element of what is offered by each university. Therefore, the authors propose to delve deeper into the relationship existing between satisfaction and the intent to recommend the courses taken by the attendees.

Design/methodology/implications

The research developed in the paper endeavours to be a first approximation of the factors that determine the satisfaction of the people who attend the summer courses offered by a Spanish public university. Furthermore, this article analyses whether or not the satisfaction levels of the students translate into one of the positive behaviours that are set forth in specialised literature: recommendation. The information is based on the analysis of a self‐administered survey given to the students of the 2003 summer session after completing the course.

Findings

The results obtained show that the teaching staff, enrolment and course organisation are the elements that have an impact on student satisfaction, and they show that this satisfaction is what, to a large extent, explains the intent to recommend the courses. In addition to these three elements, and in order to increase the satisfaction levels of students, it is necessary to know the objectives that the students have.

Originality/value

This paper determines the elements that are potentially capable of generating satisfaction and the subsequent effect of the satisfaction on recommendations for the university (summer courses) have been analysed. Other papers analyse all universities, but this work analyses a university's summer courses.

Citation

Marzo‐Navarro, M., Pedraja‐Iglesias, M. and Pilar Rivera‐Torres, M. (2005), "Measuring customer satisfaction in summer courses", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 53-65. https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880510578650