Modeling the Effects of Relational Constructs On Student Satisfaction and Loyalty to University

The global higher education sector has gone through a radical shift in its modus operandi occasioned by the strategic implication of student loyalty to university given low state funding, globalization and competition among universities around the world. This paper seeks to fill literature gap in relationship marketing studies applied to education sector by modeling relational constructs of student satisfaction and loyalty to the university. A self-administered questionnaire was used to solicit data from 535 students of six federal universities in Nigerian using multi-stage cluster sampling procedure. The Partial least squares method was used to analyze the data collected. The results show that relational constructs of bonding, communication and personalization predict student satisfaction which in turn predicts student loyalty. Theoretical and practical implications as well as directions for future studies are documented in the paper.