MODERATING ROLE OF ORGANIZATION DEMOGRAPHICS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BRAND PERSONALITY AND CUSTOMER SERVICE DELIVERY OF PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES IN KENYA

Abstract

This examined the moderating role of organization demographics on the
relationship between brand personality and customer service delivery of public
universities in Kenya. Positivist paradigm was adopted by the study since it
facilitated discovery of new knowledge and findings were verified using existing
theories and findings of previous studies. The total population of the study was
61,541 respondents selected from the 15 randomly selected public universities in
Kenya. Multi-stage sampling technique was adopted to select respondents of the
study. Israel formula was adopted to calculate the ideal sample size of 398
respondents who involved fourth year undergraduate students. Questionnaires
were used to collect primary data from the respondents. Linear Mixed effect
models fitted to Restricted Maximum Likelihood (REML) models were used to
test the hypothesis of this study. Organizational demographics was revealed to
positively moderate the relationship between brand personality and customer
service delivery of public universities in Kenya. Constraints of operationalizing
variables of the study were managed by the current study modifying brand
personality model, equity theory and SERVQUAL model to suit in measuring
customer service delivery in the university context. The results of this study
contributes to new knowledge by validating existing theories and provides
guidance to policy makers and managers on how customer service delivery in the
university context can be enhanced by using brand personality and
organizational demographics. To the best of the researchers’ logic, this is the first
empirical study that quantitatively summarize the moderating effect of
organizational demographics on the relationship between brand personality and
customer service delivery by using mixed effect models fitted to Restricted
Maximum Likelihood (REML) models to measure the moderating effect of
organizational demographics on the relationship