Determinants of Students’ Intention to Recommend: The Effects of Memorable Experience, University Reputation, and Emotional Attachment

Abstract

This study investigates the determinant factors of students’ intention to recommend, by assessing the influence of memorable student experience and university reputation on students’ intention to recommend, where attachment as a mediating variable.
A quantitative approach was employed using a structured questionnaire distributed to 300 students in 3 selected private universities in Padang through purposive sampling technique. The data were analyzed using PLS – SEM 4.0 version to examine the direct and indirect relationships among the variables. The results reveal that emotional attachment is a strong mediator that mediate the relationship between university reputation and recommendation intention. While university reputation is strong predictor for student emotional attachment and recommendation intention.
This study gives the contribution through the establishment the link between memorable students’ intention to recommend and its determinants; memorable experience, university reputation and emotional attachment. Additionally, this study provides the opportunity to scholars to theoretically connect memorable student experience, university reputation, and intention to recommend directly or indirectly through the mediating effect of emotional attachment. This study identifies and addressing existing gaps, while offering new academic and practical contributions to the body of knowledge.
The research highlights the important role of university reputation in establishing student emotional attachment and intention to recommend, and this indicates that students in private universities in Padang, West Sumatera, Indonesia are more concerned about university reputation rather than any other factors that are examined in this study. Therefore, it is highly recommended for private universities providers to concentrate more on university reputation by establishing good quality academic through accreditation and quality service to create positive image for university to generate willingness of the student to recommend the universities to others.