The Drivers of Customer Satisfaction for Academic Library Services: Managerial Hints from an Empirical Study on Two Italian University Libraries Using the Kano Model

Abstract

The intent of this qualitative research is to investigate and understand the requisites of customer satisfaction for academic libraries’ users and to give managerial hints for the implementation of user centred academic library services. To this aim, we analyse the library services of two Italian Universities (the Faculty of Economics of University of Palermo and the Central Library of the University of Salerno) to find relations and congruencies and to evaluate the perceived relevance of the tangible and intangible aspects of these services. In the preliminary phase of the research, we conducted both focus groups and individual interviews involving students or researchers who regularly use the library services. This study supplies a significant analysis of qualitative data that can be functional for researchers and for university managers to plan strategic and operative activities in order to improve academic library services.

Keywords: customer satisfaction, management in education, academic library services, library management, Kano model; service quality, user satisfaction

JEL Classification: M01, M03