Why is research on Education Services underrepresented in top Marketing services journals and textbooks?

Ian Wilkinson, University of Sydney, Louise Young, University of Western Sydney

Marion Burford, UNSW

Australia New Zealand Marketing Academy Annual Conference University of Auckland, December, 2013

Abstract

We argue and provide evidence to show that education services marketing research appears to be under-represented and under-valued in the top service marketing journals and textbooks. This is despite education being economically, socially and culturally significant. This neglect is evident in the contents of top marketing journals over 10 years and a major services marketing textbook. Education services are a relevant and important context for services marketing research and this should be reflected better in text books and articles in the top services marketing journals. It is a context that is probably better understood and accessible to researchers and which has unique contextual characteristics. There is also a substantial education research literature to draw on that can help enrich and broaden services research.

Keywords: education services, services science, service contexts, theory development, research opportunities

Track: Services

1.0 Introduction

We want to argue and provide evidence of the under-representation of education services in the top services marketing journals and textbooks. Yet education services are a socially and economically important part of any society. Education builds social capital and facilitates economic development and competitive advantage (Barney 1991, Connell et al. 2010, Gylfason 2001). Education services are also a significant and growing commercial industry. The global private education market is estimated to be worth over US$2.4 trillion and the global market for higher education was estimated in 2005 to be worth US$65 billion or 1.3% of global trade in services (Chadee and Naidoo 2009). In Australia the international education market is an A$18.6 billion industry eclipsed only by iron ore, coal and gold exports (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2009). Lastly, education is becoming ever more important these days as nations compete to become clever countries and industries become more and more knowledge based (Godin 2006).

Education research in marketing is mainly reported in two specialist journals i.e. the Journal of Marketing Education and the Journal of Marketing of Higher Education. These are respected academic journals but you would expect that education services would be also well represented in the top services marketing journals. But this is not so. In addition, education itself is a well-established scientific discipline with its own conferences and journals that can be drawn on to inform services marketing theory and research. And there are opportunities to translate service marketing theories and concepts into education research. We believe that research in education services is a valuable and fruitful context that is important in building more generalized theories of the marketing of services and the role and effects of contextual factors. Thus it should feature more in top research journals.

 

 

Furthermore, marketing academics are well positioned to do services research in education. It is a more accessible industry than many and they are familiar with it, especially the higher education sector. They spend much of their professional lives providing education services. Student samples are also appropriate for this research because they are the consumers of these services rather than being a suspect surrogate for consumers or managers.

The organisation of rest of this paper is as follows. First we provide evidence of the neglect of education services in the top services marketing journals and a leading marketing services textbook. Next we highlight some of the distinctive characteristics of services marketing in an education context. Finally, we discuss the nature of services marketing research opportunities in education based on a sample of recent education research articles.

This paper is not designed to provide an overview of existing research regarding the marketing of education service but only to highlight its underrepresentation in top services research journals and the type of opportunities it provides as a fertile field for services marketing research. It is similar to the way Berry and Bendapudi (2007) advocated for health care as a fertile field for service research.

2.0 The Neglect of Education Services in Services Marketing

We examined the service context of articles published over 10 years (2001-2010) in the top two services research journals, the Journal of Service Research (JSR) and the Journal of Services Marketing (JSM). There are only 3 papers in the JSR using an education context and 2 of them focus on student services other than education (Page and Spreng 2002, Teas and DeCarlo 2004). More such articles, 12, were published in the JSM addressing a variety of topics, including: country of origin effects (Javalgi, Cutler and Winans 2001);  promotion (Paswan and Ganesh 2003);  consumer satisfaction and service Quality (Bigné, Moliner and Sánchez 2003, O’Neill and Palmer 2004, White and Yu 2005, Snipes, Thomson and Oswald 2006, Paswan, Spears and Ganesh 2007, Nance and White 2009);  service development (Timmor and Rymon 2007);  consumer behaviour (Licata, Chakraborty and Krishnan 2008); marketing strategy (Javalgi, Joseph and LaRosa 2009); and customer relationship management (Raciti and Dagger 2010)  

Several characteristics if the reported research emerge. The most common focus is on factors affecting service quality based on students’ (consumers) perceptions. In many articles the focus on education services is not mentioned in the title or abstract, even though this is not the case for other types of services. This seems to indicate some undervaluing of this context, even when the sample used is far more substantial and representative than those used for other types of services research, such as Snipes et al. (2006), whose study of gender bias in evaluations of service quality was based on a sample of 8,667 students. A further indication of the neglect of education services research in services marketing is in terms of the content of textbooks on services marketing. For example, an examination of the subject index for a leading textbook (Lovelock et al. 2007) reveals one entry under the heading education, which concerns higher education in S-E Asian markets. The names of some education institutions are also indexed. Apart from this there is no mention of this important service context. Why is this?

3.0 Services Research Opportunities in an Education Context

 

 

Several distinctive characteristics of education provide research opportunities for extending services marketing research. They include:

• a mix of for profit and not for profit organisations delivering education services • information asymmetries between the customer (student) and service supplier (teacher )

are significant • some levels of education are a form of forced consumption • education is more product oriented in terms of curriculum design • students are both consumers and the raw or semi-processed “material” that education

processes and sorts into different types of citizens with varying knowledge and skills. • education outputs are co-produced by the student, other students and teachers • credence attributes play an important role in evaluating education services • the duration of service delivery is very long – a kind of durable service consumed over

many years • education is a pre-need service (Kyj, Jayachandran and Haverty 1988) where purchase

and consumption take place prior to much of its use. • teachers are service suppliers and are also consumers of student outputs e.g. exams, essays • the nature and role of consumer loyalty has special characteristic, such as advancement

rather than retention (i.e. failure and repeating a class) is the goal.

There is a long tradition of research in education covering many issues including some that parallel research in services marketing. Services marketing researchers can draw on this research for potential contributions to theory and methodology. We have not attempted a survey of existing service research to see to what extent it has drawn on education research. But, to get an idea of the kinds of topics researched in education and how they might be relevant to other types of services, we examined the research topics of articles published over 2 years (2009-2010) in two leading education research journals - the American Journal of Educational Research and the International Journal of Educational Research. Both are rated A*. Several topics were apparent.

Education Service Performance. A major focus is on student education outcomes (perceived and objective) and the factors affecting this. Education researchers have made important contributions to methodology here. An example is the development of multilevel models that are necessary because students are nested within classrooms, classrooms are nested within schools and schools are nested within school districts. Many of the effects of interest, such as school, teacher and policy effects, are not at the level of the individual student. (Marsh et al. 2010). Failing to take into account multilevel effects in an appropriate manner can result in severely biased estimates. The performance of other types of services also involve multilevel effects including front line service providers, firm, division and regions and has received some research attention (e.g. Malthouse et al. 2004). The research results and methodologies developed in education could assist in developing service research on this topic.

A key distinction is between perceived and objective outcomes which is also relevant to other services. Various tests are used to rate actual learning, which is also used to evaluate teachers and education suppliers (Rowe 2000). Of course, the incoming level of education of students matters and researchers focus on value added measures of progress (Leeuw 2009, Ladd and Walsh 2002). These measures take into account the background and characteristics of the students attending a school as well as changes in test results over time. The same value added concept could be applied to other services.

 

 

Research has drawn attention to the distinction between actual and perceived performance and also how perceived performance depends on the characteristics and inputs of students as well as teachers and the environment. In other words education research shows how the value of education is co-produced by teachers and students in a context. This is in line with concepts of the co-creation of value in marketing (e.g. Kleinaltenkamp, Ehret and Flieβ1996, Vargo 2008, Vargo and Lusch 2004) and the role of other consumers in contributing to service quality (e.g. Rosenbaum and Massiah 2007, Rosenbaum 2008). In addition, students can play the role of part-time service providers, helping each other (peer-assisted learning) and assisting the teacher in other ways (Bowers and Martin 2007). Other students are part of the social servicescape of education (Toombs and McColl-Kennedy 2003) and they can help or the education process, such as when they demand extra attention and become disruptive. Similar types of issues arise in other service contexts when the services are consumed by groups of consumers, e.g. restaurants, theatre and sporting events.

The social servicescape is important in other ways in affecting student satisfaction and performance. An example is Marsh’s research on students’ self-concept and the big-fish-little-pond-effect - the way a student’s self-concept is affected by the behaviour and performance of other students (e.g. Marsh and Hau 2003). A student’s self concept is negatively related to the performance of their peers. The self-concept has been used in other contexts including health care and sport and could be relevant to service evaluations more widely. For example, when consumption takes place in social and group contexts does the service satisfaction of others affect personal service ratings?

The technological context of education is another research issue relevant to many types of services. For example, issues such as the Google effect and the role of Internet-accessible information are widely discussed and often criticised by educators (sometimes this is referred to as destruction of expertise). It is now a fact of life and affects education design and delivery in various ways (e.g. Brabazon 2006). Similar types of issues arise for other services, where more readily accessible information can change consumers’ behaviour and perceptions, e.g. health care.

Student Segments and Behaviour. Another research topic focuses on students as consumers and co-creators of education services. First, students place different demands on teachers and institutions, depending on their intelligence, prior education and other characteristics. One focus of research is on disadvantaged students of various kinds, including indigenous students, those requiring financial support, those living in rural areas, or those having behavioural or learning problems e.g. the deaf and the blind. These are student segments that still have to be served and require the adaptation of education services to meet their needs, including, in extreme cases, the creation of specialist suppliers. Other types of services also face the problems of dealing with disadvantaged consumer segments, and incur additional costs in serving them. Sometimes they are forced to serve them by law (e.g. phone, legal and health services). There are research opportunities here in comparing the education context with the provision of other types of services to see if one can learn from the other.

The international student is a segment that tends to require special treatment and can affect the education experience of others. Research shows that, up to a threshold percentage, international students are more readily integrated into a class and are forced to communicate with local students in the local language. But, as numbers increase, different language groups can arise leading to less integration and more student isolation (Ward, Masgoret and Gezentsvey 2009). Diversity in the classroom represents a challenge and an opportunity for

 

 

education services and the insights from diversity classroom management could provide valuable solutions for other service providers. The mix of consumers in other service contexts may have similar affects of the social-servicescape and perceptions of quality and satisfaction.

Education research has studied extensively the nature and effects of student behaviour on education performance, including how they choose courses and providers, cope with various aspects of education and interact with others. In effect these are studies of students’ (consumers) role in co-creating outcomes. Much attention is focused on dealing with problem students, those dissatisfied with the offerings, and how they manifest this behaviour. This includes those who resist being educated and/or rage against the system in various ways. This has obvious parallels with studies of customer rage in other types of services (e.g. Patterson et al 2009).

Service Supplier Characteristics and Training. The frontline service provider obviously plays a key role in service delivery and performance and this is reflected in research on teachers and their effectiveness. As part of this there is examination of teachers’ perceptions and motivations. Research has examined the relation between perceptions of students and actual performance, prejudices (Scruggs and Mastropieri 1996) and the effects of race (Ladson-Billings 1998), ethnicity and gender (Farkas et al 1990) on class interactions. Many of these issues are relevant to other services. An example is the effect of service provider perceptions and prejudices on the treatment of different types of customers. Women complain that many technical service providers, mostly men, treat them as dumb and patronise them in service encounters, leading to dissatisfaction and even rage. Another issue is the motivations of people to become particular types of service providers. This could affect the problems faced in some sectors in recruiting service workers. Research in education, such as Schutz et al. (2001), could provide guidance here.

Teaching Methods and Strategy. This is an area of research that is much more service context specific and has less relevance for service provision generally. One exception is research on how to get students interested and involved in subjects they tend to shy away from, such as mathematics and statistics. The repackaging and redesign of such courses to better engage with and meet the needs of the student are examples of consumer-oriented strategies.

Education Management. This refers to more general strategic and administrative problems confronting education service suppliers. It includes the recruitment, training, remuneration and evaluation of teachers, the design of effective curricula and organization structures to deliver education services. These have obvious parallels in any service delivery. As do issues of accreditation, branding, and the benchmarking of education practices. These can have positive effects in raising standards but can also result in more standardization, reducing the variety available.  

Education Policy and the Law. This is the equivalent of macromarketing in services. It includes the evaluation of education systems as a whole in terms of how effectively and efficiently different types of segments are served. This research points to the potential relevance of a macro systems perspectives in research regarding the design and evaluation of service delivery systems – one that can inform government policy and regulations.

4.0 Conclusions

We have shown that education services are a relevant and important type of service that deserves at least as much attention in top service marketing journals and textbooks as any

 

 

other service. It is not an area that we should associate only with teaching and learning issues. Insights from research on education services are potentially relevant to services generally and highlight the impact of particular contextual factors on service delivery and performance. Also, it can introduce new types of theories and methods. We believe that education services deserve to be represented more in the top services research journals and in textbooks on services marketing.

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