Marketing public and private higher education institutions: A total experiential model of international student’s satisfaction, performance and continues intention

While Malaysia has a great potential to be an education hub that attracts many international students to pursue their educational dreams in the country, a few empirical studies examined the total experiences of international students’ satisfaction in the public and private higher education institutions. The aim of this study is to measure the international students’ total experience in the Malaysian higher education sector. A theoretical research model is proposed with three identical stages including pre, during and post stages. Specifically, this study proposes that the international student’s total experience model includes university image, students’ expectation, past students experience, information sources and service quality (first stage), and the second stage includes the level of satisfaction and students’ perceived performance. The third stage, post stage, is the last stage includes international student’s continuance intention of further study. A total of 535 questionnaires were collected from international students in Malaysia in order to empirically test the theoretical model using variance based structural equation modeling for the evaluation of measurement and structural model. Statistical results imply that the model explains 65.5% of variances in international student’s continuance intention of further study. Moreover, empirical study illustrates the total experience of international students in public and private universities impacts the individual-perceived value and service quality. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.