IBBA Students’ Perception on Service Quality Towards Satisfaction: An Application of SERVPERF in the Service of the Faculty of Management Science, Ubon Ratchathani University

บทคัดย่อ

In the face of intense competition in the new educational environment, surviving in the market has become the key challenge for many educational institutions and different facilities within an institution. While educational institutions and faculties continue to strive for better education quality as a means of setting themselves apart from others, there has been growing emphases on not only the quality of education itself, but also of all services provided by educational institutions. Since these services consist mainly of intangible elements, service quality has taken considerable interest in many educational institutions. This study therefore considers students as customers and not products of educational institutions and tries to apply the 22 items of the SERVPERF scale to Measure students’ (customers) perceived service quality in the Faculty of Management Science, Ubon Ratchathani University (FMS, UBU) with respect to its International Business Management Program (IBBA) Students. The primary data was collected using questionnaires. 75 questionnaires were administered to cover the entire population size of this program. The result revealed that students have a satisfactory level of positive perception on the services of the faculty. However, the perception towards tangibility was not encouraging. All dimensions of SERVPERF i.e. Reliability, assurance, empathy, tangibility and responsiveness contribute towards the service quality as seen by IBBA students but the influence of Reliability and Assurance is not so significant. What is more is, the results revealed that there is a positive linear relationship between the overall service quality and students satisfaction in the faculty. This therefore indicate the suitability of the SERVPERF scale and its applicability for measuring service quality and students’ (customers) satisfaction at the faculty of Management Science, Ubon Ratchathani University.