Due to the decrease of the entrance resources of universities, the Ministry of Education has announced the restructuring of universities and the withdrawal of failed universities. Lecture services provided by universities can be seen as a result of the interactions between professors and students. The quality of university education can also be determined by the quality level of professors. Competent and effective key actions of professors are very important functions for students.
The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between university image, student satisfaction, trust, and word of mouth in the quality of education service provided by the university for the survival and growth. Thus, 261 questionnaires for the students of the 4-year university of humanities and social sciences of national universities in Jinju city were used for the hypothesis test. The sub-dimensions of educational service quality were composed of teaching method, lecture contents, teaching attitude, and communication. AMOS 20.0 was used for confirmation factor analysis and path analysis.
The results of the second-order structural model testing are as follows. First, educational service quality has more influence on university image than student satisfaction. As a result of examining the sub-dimensions of educational service quality, the degree of relative influence is in the order of lecture contents, teaching method, teaching attitude, and communication.
Second, university image has the most influence on student satisfaction in the effect of university image on student satisfaction, trust and word of mouth. Third, student satisfaction has a higher effect on trust in the effect of student satisfaction on trust and word of mouth. Fourth, lecture content(0.938) and teaching method(0.923) were found to be the most important factors of educational service quality, and their influence on university image, student satisfaction, and word of mouth is bigger than the other factors. Finally, there is a significant difference in the university image, trust, and word of mouth according to the students'' gender, but there is no difference in student satisfaction. Overall, male students are more positive about university image, student satisfaction, trust, and word of mouth than female students.
This study is meaningful in terms of analyzing the students of the humanities and social sciences and suggesting the implications. In addition, by adding the influence relationship between university image and trust, which has not been important in domestic educational service researches, it is identified that educational service quality is important to enhance student satisfaction, but the role of university image is also critical to improve the satisfaction.
Although teaching quality, which is the most important service in the education service provided by the university, does not exceed professor quality, it affects student satisfaction and positively affects the image and loyalty of the university as a result. In order to improve the performance such as word of mouth and trust, the teaching contents and proficiency of each individual should be strengthened. In addition, universities need to differentiate themselves by considering gender differences as well as strategies to reinforce positive university performance.