Brand trust, institutional commitment, and their impact on student loyalty: evidence for higher education in India

Oversupply of higher education services in emerging countries, like India, implies an ever-increasing cost of student acquisition despite large student populations. Hence, creating trust through effective service delivery supported with full institutional commitment remains the only way to create student loyalty and bring the subsequent acquisition costs down. This study investigates the impact of four dimensions of brand trust, namely reliability, credibility, benevolence and integrity, on students' loyalty, and the mediating role played by institutional commitment for this relationship. Results show that reliability is the strongest direct determinant of loyalty followed by integrity, while benevolence can lead to loyalty only if the commitment is evident. These, as well as other interesting findings, have direct implications for top management/administrator of a higher education institute (HEI) in the form of specific emphasis to elements of trust for creating higher student loyalty.