The influence of explicit and implicit service promises on Asian students’ expectations of overseas universities

Abstract

Despite past studies that explore the typical factors that influence Asian consumers’ decision making processes little has been done to address the influence of information sources on their expectations of services. This study addresses this gap by exploring Asian consumer’s information and knowledge sources (explicit service promises such as advertising, personal selling and implicit service promises such as tangibles and price) that influence their expectations prior to choice of overseas higher education. The study applies Zeithaml, Berry and Parasuraman’s (1993) model that proposes that a customer’s level of expectations is dependent on several antecedents. Results indicate the three most influential sources of information on Asian students expectations of universities are: past experiences, advertising and word of mouth. The findings suggest that the more explicit and implicit service promises the respondent is exposed to; the higher the desired and predicted expectations of the university’s service quality. However their level of expectations (both desired and predicted) is considerably greater when exposed to explicit service promises. The findings also suggest that measuring the influence of these information sources provides insightful information for universities when developing marketing communication campaigns.