Competitiveness of Higher Education Institutions in Hong Kong: The Mediating Effect of Student Satisfaction, School Image and Student Loyalty

A rapid expansion of higher education in last ten year in Hong Kong, especially in the development of self-financed programmes, it is necessary to address the issue of the qulaity of education, student satisfaction and image of institutions. Despite extensive studies in the areas of school image, student satisfaction and student loyalty respectively, an integrated model of these variables with mediating effects of school image, student satisfaction and loyalty is still lacking. To carry out the investigation, full-time students from higher education institutions were randomly selected as the targeted participants in this research. The questionnaire survey elicited a response from 297 students from 320 students in four self-financed higher education institutions, which gave a response rate of 92.8%. The research found that student satisfaction has full mediating effect on the relationship between teaching quality and the respective school image, school reputation and student loyalty. Further, both student loyalty and school image have a partial mediating effect on the relationship between student satisfaction and school reputation.