IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jmkthe/v25y2015i1p5-28.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

They do not buy it: exploring the extent to which entering first-year students view themselves as customers

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel B. Saunders

Abstract

While a number of scholars have discussed the pervasiveness of the conceptualization of students as customers, to date there has been limited reliable research examining the extent to which students actually view themselves as customers. Using a survey that was administered to a census of entering first-year students at a large public research university (59.8% response rate), this study shows that students do not agree with many of the educational beliefs and planned behaviors associated with a customer orientation. Results of exploratory factor analysis suggested only 28.9% of respondents expressed a customer orientation. These results show that contrary to what has become common sense in postsecondary education, most students at this public university do not express a customer orientation towards their education. Such findings should make scholars and practitioners rethink some of their embedded assumptions with regards to the goals, motivations, and general educational orientations of today's college students.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel B. Saunders, 2015. "They do not buy it: exploring the extent to which entering first-year students view themselves as customers," Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(1), pages 5-28, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jmkthe:v:25:y:2015:i:1:p:5-28
    DOI: 10.1080/08841241.2014.969798
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08841241.2014.969798
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/08841241.2014.969798?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jmkthe:v:25:y:2015:i:1:p:5-28. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/WMHE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.