Study on the impact of services offered on student satisfaction and the satisfaction led word of mouth by students pursuing management education

Purpose This paper purports to study and assess the impact of student satisfaction on various services offered by an educational institution offering management education and also the word of mouth communication (WoMC) done by such student in referring the institutions to others. The study aimed at various factors like core services, facilitating services and support services offered by institutions and measured the responses of the levels of satisfaction on a five-point Likert scale. Design/methodology/approach The sample size of the study consists of 873 students pursuing management education such as BBA, BBM and MBA, belonging to government colleges, private colleges affiliated to state university, private universities and deemed universities in the state of Telangana, India. Findings The attributes used in this work showed positive and noteworthy impact on the students' satisfaction level though with varying degree of strength as evident from the regression analysis. However, core services (teaching quality of the faculty, their expertise and experience, course electives offered, library facilities, academic counselling services, etc.) was the most influencing factor and has highest impact on satisfaction of students amongst all the variables. Also, the study reiterates that gender of the student does not have any significant impact on the students' satisfaction on the services offered by the institutions nor on the recommendations made by them to others for admissions. Originality/value This study is unique in evaluating the determinants of students' satisfaction in a management institution/school as well as their influence of the recommendations made by them to the prospective students through word of mouth (WOM).