Service Quality, Students’ Satisfaction and Supportive Attitude in the Higher Education Institutions: Evidence from an Emerging Market

The higher education sector has been growing steadily in all over the world. Similar improvements are experienced in Turkey. Growing number of higher education institutions cause growing competition. Thus these institutions are in need of developing their service quality level and satisfying the students. Higher education institutions need support from their students. Supportive attitudes of students may make a big contribution to these institutions. Thus it is significant for higher education institutions to create students’ supportive attitudes. The aim of the study is to investigate the higher education institutions’ service quality and its impact on student’s satisfaction and supportive attitude in Turkey, as an emerging market. A total of 610 students in two universities in Adana, Turkey attended to present study. Descriptive analysis was done at the first stage, reliability analysis at the second stage as well. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was then employed. Finally Structural Equation Modelling was applied to examine the hypothesized model. It is concluded that service quality has a significant and positive effect on students' satisfaction and indirectly on students' supportive attitude through the students’ satisfaction path