DOI: 10.2478/midj-2018-0003 MID Journal Volume 1 ǀ Issue 1 ǀ 2018 ǀ pp. 53-62 Students’ Total Experience within a Romanian Public University Ciprian Marcel POP 1* , Mihai Florin BĂCILĂ 1 , Clarisa Doriana SLEVAȘ-STANCIU 1 1 Babeş-Bolyai University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Romania ___________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the understanding of experience marketing in a higher education context and also on its implications on students’ loyalty. Therefore, the article explores the most significant determinants of students’ experience, such teaching process, administrative service, courses content, library, accommodation, eating spaces and medical services, university’s space and campus’s facilities, university’s reputation and the provided career prospects. The research aims to outline the importance of analysing students’ experience in the increasingly competitive market of educational services and also to provide a sustainable basis for the Romanian higher education improvement. In its last section, the objective of the research is to measure the student’s loyalty towards the university and also the experience’s impact on their loyalty. The originality of this study consist in the authors attempt to design a student’s total experience survey, this paper being between the first ones analysing this topic in Romania. KEYWORDS: Students; Experience; Higher education; Loyalty RECEIVED: August 2017 JEL CLASSIFICATION: M31, A23 ACCEPTED: November 2017 1. Introduction In the current economic context, more and more entities militate for the idea of delivering customer experiences (Buttle, 2009, p.165). The marketing literature describes this concept as the next battlefield in which confrontations between entities will occur, thus providing a sustainable differentiation (Shaw and Ivens, 2002, p. xi). It is well known that higher education is led to a fierce competition driven by ”economic forces resulting from the development of global education markets and the reduction of government founds that forces tertiary institution to seek other financial sources” (Abdullah, 2006, p. 570). This is one of the main reasons why higher education institutions must be concerned about students feelings regarding the offered study programs and their educational experience. Generally, an experience is described as an intrapersonal response, or an interpretation of an external stimulus. Schmitt (2010, p. 8) describes the experience concept as “the perceptions, feelings and thoughts that consumers have when they encounter products and brands in the marketplace and engage in consumption activities”. Thus, the students’ experience with a particular study program can be defined as the cognitive and affective outcome of their interaction with the academic and administrative staff, with the university space, with all the processes and also with the available technology. In this context, interest in factors affecting students’ experience has increased, mainly because of the important role of the experience economy, which Pine and Gilmore (1998) highlight as the last stage of the progression of economic value, but also due to the defining role of the student feedback in a sustained improvement process of the study program (Gibson, 2010). The focus of the paper is on analyzing a number of factors affecting masteral students experience in a public Romanian university and also on the most important driving forces of students’ loyalty in * Corresponding author: Ciprian Marcel Pop - marcel.pop@econ.ubbcluj.ro