An Examination of ‘Self-Monitoring’ and the ‘Influence of Others’ as Determinants of Attitude to the Higher Education Application Service Process in the UK

The paper presents empirical research that investigated significant dependent relationships between ‘type’ of influencer, e.g., parent, sibling, friend and total number of influencers, and levels of satisfaction within the context of an extended service buying process, i.e., application to an institution of higher education. The type of influencer is investigated in terms of the relevance of their indirect prior experience. The total number of influencers is considered as a useful representation of the level of self-monitoring. Satisfaction, although considered as an attribute of service quality in previous literature, is here modelled as an attitude, viewed from the consumer's internal mental and emotional processing, rather than from the service quality perspective. The findings indicate a strong dependent link between the measure of self-monitoring and the major measure of cognitive satisfaction. There was no such strong link between ‘type’ of influencer and any measure of cognitive or affective satisfaction, nor was it proved that the ‘type’ of influencer caused a difference in levels of satisfaction. The relevance of prior experience of others does not exert a very strong effect on levels of satisfaction. Finally the level of self-monitoring, expressed as a behavioural variable, i.e., total number of decision-makers, was found to effect both cognitive and affective levels of satisfaction. The implications for higher education marketers are that affective or emotional satisfaction or dissatisfaction can remain in the applicant's memory for longer than cognitive or thinking satisfaction or dissatisfaction.