The Effect of Marketing Strategy on International Postgraduates Students' Loyalty Mediated By Negative Emotion Satisfaction towards Malaysian Public Universities

ABSTRACT This research aims to examine the effect of higher education performance of marketing strategy on customer loyalty mediator by negative emotional satisfaction among international postgraduate students in Malaysian public universities. The carefully chosen elements were marketing strategy, negative emotion satisfaction, and customer loyalty. The theoretical framework in this study was based on the Social Exchange Theory. A quantitative approach using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was utilised as the main research design. The data was collected from international postgraduate students in Malaysian public universities. A survey questionnaire was developed and verified for its construct validity based on the judgments of 2 experts. A pilot test was conducted to investigate the questionnaire reliability involving 50 respondents selected from Malaysian public universities. Explanatory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted on 100 respondents in Malaysian public universities to verify the research variables that could be used in the actual study. The actual survey questionnaire was distributed to 380 respondents, and the data were analysed using SEM to determine the relationship between the variables. The research results indicated that marketing strategy has a significant and positive effect on negative emotional satisfaction. The negative significant relation was (B=-0.267, p< 0.05), Moreover, negative emotional satisfaction mediated the relationship between marketing strategy and customer loyalty. The positive significant relation was (B= 0.068, p< 0.05). The main implication of the study is that Malaysian public universities should focus on emotional satisfaction to increase the loyalty of the customers