The Value Trade-off in Higher Education Service: a Qualitative Intercultural Approach to Students

Purpose: Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have become a highly competitive market, where consumers (i.e. students) are highly involved in their choices, and managers need to focus on competitive edges. This paper aims to understand the factors that influence international Master students' choice behaviour and fulfil student expectations of customer value in HEIs. Design/methodology: With qualitative information (five focus groups) collected from international students (of 12 different nationalities) of several universities in Spain, UK and China, the paper investigates the formation of customer value as a trade-off between benefits and costs. This qualitative approach aims first at assessing this particular service through the concept of value through verifying both the positive and negative dimensions of educational service, and second, to comment on the intercultural aspects of this dual approach to higher education consumption. Findings: The results show different levels of benefits: the functional value generally comes from infrastructures and good teachers that offer abundant practical experiences. The benefits from quality education also derived from teamwork with the colleagues who possess equal academic strength. Social benefits come from experiences outside the academic environment, -855- Intangible Capital - http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/ic.706 working with people from different cultural backgrounds who have different perspectives. Emotional rewards come from University reputation and relationships with instructors. Costs of time and effort are differently seen across programs and vary widely upon nationalities and cultural backgrounds. Practical implications: Since the competitive environments of HEIS are fast becoming more and more complex changing rapidly and dynamically, attention must be paid to International students spreading positive or negative word-of-mouth out of their experience. Different values of customers in different countries suggest that the strategy used by the corporation in a certain country, may not be apply to another. Social implications: The results of the study allow the industry to see the future prospects of the meat sector and make the necessary changes. The results lead to improved transparency and responsible behaviour. Originality/value: Within the wide trend of research on students' choice, this work has focused on International Master Students, a public with relatively limited number of studies. The contribution lays on a value-based approach as a trade-off focusing, as a step forward from the traditional sociodemographic approaches, on behavioural variables (functional, social and emotional values) and considering not just price but also non-monetary costs