Taking advantage of the empirical opportunity supplied by the education service, this work proposes investigating two themes related to the analysis of service sequences: the variation in expectations and perceptions over time and their predictive capacity relative to future service quality. Two research objectives were defined: (a) to test for possible alterations in perception and expectations as to graduation, by accompanying the evolution of experience with the service, and (b) to test the capacity of expectations and perceptions for forecasting service quality in a future post-graduate situation. The convenience sample comprised 71 students, divided into two groups in accordance with the term they attended to. The research instrument used was a simplified version of the Servqual questionnaire. Both Perceptions and Expectations showed a significant decrease between the groups. The variations in the two groups for the three variables were practically the same. Although the individuals are not the same and have different demographic characteristics, the result suggests that the differences must be associated with their experience of the service. Finally, current expectations demonstrated positive and significant impact on future expectations.
Quality; expectations; perceptions; service sequences; relationships
