Marketing for higher education institutions: determinants of customers’ satisfaction at a Syrian Business School

Purpose of the paper: In 2001, a new legislative reform that governs the work of private universities in Syria took place. Since that time, competition in the Syrian higher education market became more apparent in both public and private sectors, and for the first time the concept of student as customer became much more popular in the higher education sector. Within the cooperation between the Syrian Government and the European Commission and with a budget of over 14 million Euros, the Higher Institute for Business Administration (HIBA) was founded in 2002. This institution is officially considered as the only public business school in Syria, and since its establishment, it attracted many students for both postgraduate and undergraduate. This study aims at identifying the determinants of customer (student)’ satisfaction at HIBA for MBA and EMBA students.

Design, methodology and approach: Using a quantitative survey of 52 factors quoted from a study done by Douglas et al (2006) and divided into 7Ps according to Ivy (2008) marketing mix model for business schools, both customer expectations and satisfactions were measured.

Findings: For 55 MBA and EMBA students who participated in the study, the descriptive analysis show that students' expectations were high before registering at HIBA, however, during the actual experience of the course, students’ satisfaction diminished. T-test and one way ANOVA showed that there is some variance between feelings of satisfaction for different groups.