Abstract

The main aim of the study is to determine what kind of complaints students have, how universities react to these complaints, and how relevant reactions affect justice perceptions, complainant satisfaction, exit and negative word of mouth intensions of the students. In order to find out students’ perceptions on university responses to their complaints, the justice dimensions; procedural, interactional, distributive, from relevant services marketing literature, are utilized. Moreover, the effects of these perceived justice dimensions on students’ complaint satisfaction, exit and negative word of mouth intentions are measured. Path analysis results show that all justice dimensions exert significant effects on complainant satisfaction, exit and negative word of mouth intensions. Discussions of the results, implications for university administrations for better marketing activities, limitations and avenues for future research are also presented in the study.

Key words: Student complaints, perceived justice dimensions, marketing, path analysis, Northern Cyprus Universities.