The effect of student culture on loyalty to and perceived quality of a university's Master of Business programs

In this study the loyalty and perceived quality elements of Brand Equity were slightly modified from Netemeyer, Krishnan, Pullig, Wang, Yagci, Dean, Ricks and Wirth’s (2004) Brand Equity measures. The relationship between 548 Master of Business students’ cultural values and their level of loyalty to, and perceived quality of, their university is being examined within this paper. The sample was taken from a large regional university in Melbourne, Australia. Robertson and Hoffman’s (2000) Cultural Values Scale was used to measure students’ cultural values as this scale was derived from Hofstede’s (1980; 1991) Cultural Values Framework. Some of the major findings of this study were that high Collectivism, Uncertainty Avoidance and Power Distance ratings are the key determinants of student loyalty and perceived quality.