Customer satisfaction formation in private tutoring as a paid supplementary education service: A conceptual framework

As a common type of paid educational service, private tutoring is evaluated not only in terms of the learning support offered but also in terms of how the service is organised and delivered. In the current study, rather than the entire offerings of paid educational services, the focus is specifically on private tutoring. The reason is that, in addition to expecting improvement in academic achievement, the quality of private tutoring will also be influenced by pertinent fees, scheduling types, communication channels, reports on the latest educational progress, assurance from the service provider, and other types of experience. By referring to existing research on private tutoring, supported by relevant theoretical frameworks, including perceived value theory, service quality theory, customer satisfaction theory, and the application of a customer-based stakeholder viewpoint, a review-grounded conceptual framework is proposed in the current study to delineate how customer satisfaction with private tutoring is shaped. In the framework, there are two complementary domains, namely core educational service quality and Service-delivery credibility, with the former concentrating on the levels of learning support, instructional competence, and perceived educational payoff. Meanwhile, in the latter, the focus is on responsiveness, communication clarity, pricing transparency, and organisational assurance. Moreover, perceived customer value serves as the evaluative link between the two domains and overall satisfaction. When perceived alignment between the educational promise and the actual service-delivery arrangement is higher, the positive relationship between perceived customer value and satisfaction is expected to be stronger. In particular, customer-side stakeholders include students and parents, with students as the direct users of relevant service offerings, whereas parents frequently serve as the decision makers, payers, and co-evaluators. Through the proposed framework, existing literature of educational service marketing and management is enriched by elucidating how both educational substance and Service-delivery credibility are considered when deriving satisfaction with a market-facing educational service among customers.