Influencia del sentido de pertenencia y otras variables en la modelización de la intención de recompra :una aplicación en el contexto de la Educación Superior

Résumé

This research seeks through empirical testing to confirm the relationship between the sense of belonging to a company or institution and the likelihood of repurchasing. With this end in mind, we consider the context of Higher Education (HE), looking for the variables which may influence the repurchase intention, that is the returning to the same college, university, or business school where a student had previously studied. Our study has been carried out with more than 350 responses obtained from the alumni of three small and medium-sized institutions in Spain, the United States of America, and Colombia. The questionnaire designed for this study included questions regarding quality and value perceived as well as student satisfaction, in addition to questions referring to sense of belonging and repurchase intention. Moreover, a sequence of moderator and mediator variables, such as demographic and social variables, have been included in the study. In order to model these relationships, we apply the partial least square (PLS) method using SmartPLS software. The applied model takes into consideration reflective indicators for each variable. The results obtained allow us to affirm that the pride or sense of belonging felt by the alumni can be a good predictor of the repurchase intention (returning to the HE Institution) and, therefore, these results allow us to propose this variable as a useful tool for marketing in the future. The final objective of this research is to enable the managers of HE institutions to focus on the development of strategies which would increase the sense of belonging in the alumni.