2008 - Marketing Educators' Association

COLLEGIATE LIVING/LEARNING PROGRAMS: EXPLORING
POTENTIAL ANTECEDENTS OF STUDENT SATISFACTION
Mark Ligas, Fairfield University, Charles F. Dolan School of Business,
North Benson Rd., Fairfield, CT 06824-5195; mligas@mail.fairfield.edu
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this research is to better understand
student satisfaction with a collegiate living/learning
program. Literatures from both the education and
services marketing domains, coupled with verbatim
accounts generated by student informants during
depth interviews, provide theoretical and conceptual
support for two antecedents of student satisfaction,
namely programming and community-building. The
proposed model also considers two intervening
factors – whether students know others in the
program and gender – that could affect the links
between each of the antecedents and satisfaction.
INTRODUCTION
A casual surfing of college websites indicates that
collegiate living/learning programs exist at a number
of universities, both large and small (e.g., Goucher;
Albright; Catholic University of America; the
Universities of Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa; and the
SUNY system to name a few). An interest clearly
exists for educational institutions to provide students
with the opportunity to explore the relationship
between their curricular and residential life or offcampus
living experiences. One way to view a
collegiate living/learning program is as an extended
service encounter. Students “consume” a series of
activities (curricular, extracurricular, residencebased)
on a regular basis, over an extended period
of time, that provide a number of intangible
outcomes (experiences, opportunities for reflection,
social bonding, etc.). As a result, student satisfaction
should depend, at least in part, on both the various
identifiable elements of the living/learning program
(i.e., various planned activities and events) and the
resultant sense of community that hopefully
emerges from these shared activities/events.
This research proposes a simple model that
identifies two possible antecedents of student
satisfaction with a collegiate living/learning program,
namely programming and community-building.
Further, the proposed model accounts for two
intervening influences – whether students know
others in the living/learning program and gender.
Research in the education literature (Strange &
Banning, 2001), in conjunction with both exploratory
and empirical work on extended service encounters
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in marketing (Arnould & Price, 1993) as well as depth
interviews with participants of a living/learning
program, provide the background for model
development and resultant hypotheses.
MODEL AND HYPOTHESES
Figure 1 presents a model for identifying student
satisfaction with a collegiate living/learning program.
This model proposes that both programming (directly
and indirectly) and community-building are key causes
of student satisfaction. Further, the model suggests
that both whether students know others in the program
and gender can influence the various paths.
Know Others
Gender
Programming
FIGURE 1
Community-
Programming
Building
Satisfaction
Strange and Banning (2001) discuss the influence of
formalization (rules, procedures) in developing
effective living/learning environments. However, a
danger exists if too many rules (too high a degree of
formalization) are in place, because living/learning
environments must also be about providing students
the opportunities to explore different avenues of
thinking and acting. Too many rules make the
environment “predictable,” which in turn can seriously
limit the experience. Arnould and Price (1993) discuss
this notion with regard to extraordinary service
encounters, where customers may have certain
expectations; however, these expectations, formed by
service provider messages, are intentionally left
vague, so that the individual experiences will be
“spontaneous and unrehearsed.” Using the theatrical
metaphor, the living/learning experience needs a
“tangible,” well-developed setting in which the actors
(students) have many experiences, some predictable,
others unexpected (Grove, Fisk, & John, 2000).
Programming should create/maintain activities that
foster “surprises,” i.e., “transcending” the students’
expectations (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). For example,