Literature review

An in-depth review of the most representative previous research works on the subject problem of this research is presented for the period 1994-2021. Using databases such as Web of Science, Scopus, Emerald Insight, EBSCO Information Services, and Google Scholar, a number of scientific articles were obtained from public access platforms and licenses granted by HEIS. The literature search and review revolved around the research keywords CCB, SDL, service ecosystem complexity, SCB, and value co-creation. The works addressed are of scientific and academic nature, published in English, and indexed in journals focused on HE service from the perspective of marketing and pedagogy, as well as on the analysis and management of customer behavior. Bibliographic material published in non-indexed journals and whose disciplinary content had no clear relationship with the objective of this study were excluded, resulting in a final sample of 35 publications.

Student-customer analogy debate

There is a polarized debate in the literature regarding the appropriateness of considering students as customers, starting from whether universities should adopt the student-customer analogy to manage HE (^{Koris & Nokelainen, 2015}). In favor of the mentioned analogy, ^{Guilbault (2016)} urges us to stop denying students are customers and instead recommends responding to their needs and opinions. Other authors have supported this idea, highlighting that universities face the challenges of a competitive market, such as the decrease in funding and student enrollment, so they must apply marketing strategies to achieve greater market share, just like any other organization (^{Hemsley-Brown & Oplatka, 2006}; ^{Su & Bao, 2001}), considering students as the main customer and recognizing them as actors in achieving service quality, being HEIS the main responsible for generating strategies that enable student loyalty and retention (^{Hill, 1995}).

In addition to the above, ^{Petruzzellis et al. (2006)} consider that universities should adopt the customer-student analogy due to the need to measure their performance through specific metrics, such as student satisfaction. Supporting the idea, ^{Seeman and O'Hara (2006)} proposed an information system focusing on the student as a customer and managing the interaction with all traditional issues -admissions, enrollment, and financial aid-, considering the importance of ensuring student satisfaction based on students' perception as an indicator of quality.

Even though several researchers advocate the practicality of the systematization of treating the student as a customer and some studies tend to point to education in terms of customer service -in key factors such as the satisfaction of students' needs and the development of innovative forms of education in the field of HE ecosystem-, it has also been mentioned that applying the same customer-business model in universities can severely damage education. For instance, and contradicting the student/customer treatment, several authors have mentioned that HE should not be seen from the general marketing perspective. Supporting this counter position, ^{Driscoll and Wicks (1998)} suggested that applying the customer-business marketing analogy to universities, comparing the educational experience to the commercial exchange of value, is dangerous for HEIS and opens the door to questioning their true purpose. Besides, ^{Svensson and Wood (2007)} emphasize that comparing students to customers when describing their relationship with universities is highly inappropriate, asserting that the student-university relationship is not limited to the purchase of a product and its use, as occurs in a customer-supplier relationship.

Supporting the approach that seeks to separate customer-business treatment from university management, ^{Wueste and Fishman (2010)} forcefully reject the use of customer service practice as applied to students, arguing that in most service areas customers can only determine their needs and pay for goods or services to satisfy them, which systematically contradicts the service nature of education, thus alerting HEIS of its adoption, since given the similarity of certain characteristics of HE with other services it could be very attractive to try to satisfy students' needs in the same way customers' satisfaction is sought. In this sense, ^{Díaz-Méndez et al. (2019}, p. 6) go further and argue that "the designation of students-as-customers is subject to problematic interpretations and may jeopardize the HE quality by directly affecting students' attitudes, understanding and motivations and distorting or impairing the quality of their learning experience, resulting in detrimental consequences for social development and educational sustainability due to the quality decrease training professionals at the university."

More recent evidence that identifies the negative consequences of said analogy can be found in the work by ^{Bunce et al. (2017)}, who demonstrated the relationship between consumer orientation, student identity, and academic performance, which highly alerts that students who identify themselves as customers are often less likely to actively participate in the development of their educational training, since by assuming themselves as customers they expect positive academic results without participation, making professors responsible for their learning. Table 1 shows a summary of the major studies involved in this debate.

There is a more equanimity analysis that has emerged, in which one seeks the clear identification of learners through a specific criterion of the different treatments they may be subject to during service experience. In this regard, ^{Koris and Nokelainen (2015)}, after conducting a study of how students expect to be treated, conclude that the student-customer analogy is appropriate for specific facets of the university-student relationship, such as feedback, classroom studies, and staff communication, but not suitable for other processes, such as curricular design, rigor, classroom behavior, and graduation.

Towards the maturity of differentiating the debate, ^{Senior et al. (2017)} propose a hybrid model for the growth of HEIS based on a consumer approach, in which positioning HEIS in a market environment is fundamental, but without neglecting the aspects of regulatory oversight, among which the essential regulations of university behavior and rigor stand out. In this way, the authors emphasize the importance of avoiding generating a strict market relationship with students, considering them exclusively as a customer, understanding that this could be detrimental to their learning process. Furthermore, this hybrid model seeks a balance between the performance indicators expected from the market and students' natural position in the university.

Consistent with academic efforts to separate the management of students from that of customers, during the COVID-19 pandemic the limited or non-existing relationship between a customer and a student, as well as the management that both should be given, was highlighted with greater force. For instance, ^{Calma and Dickson-Deane (2020)} emphasize that students are different from customers, mentioning that the first are learners within the teaching-learning process and not buyers of an educational experience, so students' participation cannot be reduced to the purchase of education, but to explore, co-create and be co-responsible for the results obtained.

Finally, and within the context of HE marketization, as various authors refer to the business approach to educational management (^{Banwait, 2021}; ^{Gupta, 2018}; ^{Hurt, 2012}; ^{Judson & Taylor, 2014}) that alludes to the customer/student analogy as a practice that seeks commercial benefits over the fulfillment of academic objectives, ^{Scott (2021)} points out that when students are assimilated as customers they want to be satisfied and not challenged, and hence they passively participate in an "entertaining" class discussion but without academic rigor.

Customer complaint behavior

When organizations identify and understand CCB they obtain information about their customers' perceptions, which is valuable for managing service quality (^{Goodman & Newman, 2003}). For decades, CCB was largely defined under the perspective of goods-dominant logic (e.g., ^{Gilly & Gelb, 1982}; ^{Singh, 1988}), understood as a post-purchase activity whose study was focused on identifying and understanding the factors that motivate compliant behavior. However, from the SDL approach it has been understood that the complaint is not a specific moment but a dynamic process that takes place based on different factors such as the customer, service, situations, macro elements, attitudes and experience on complaint behavior, industry structure, and the vendor/product (^{Mousavi & Esfidani, 2013}; ^{Tronvoll, 2007}).

Other research streams have focused on determining CCB types through various models (e.g., ^{Crie, 2003}; ^{Singh, 1990}). But for this study, ^{Tronvoll (2007}, ²⁰¹²) research on CCB is particularly relevant, as it presents a CCB framework based on the SDL approach, contrasting the conventional CCB view as a static activity that takes place after the purchase with a different proposal claiming that CCB in which the exchange of goods is absent can be understood as a dynamic process that continuously adjusts and occurs during the interaction with the service. The author does this by presenting four narratives that show distinct types and interaction levels between the actors and the consumer's evaluation.

The narratives include shoes purchasing, a car rental, and cellphone purchasing, services in which there is a good that materializes the exchange temporarily or indefinitely, where the service is evaluated by a short human interaction or during the time of use. These services are marked by the "control" of the buyer and the limited level of relationship between the staff and the customer, with the most active relationship being that between the good and the consumer, thus leaving human relations in second place. However, the author presents a fourth service, HE, in which several actors are considered to participate in value co-creation during the interaction. In this type of service, the relationships between students and technologies are presented as secondary, placing the most relevant human relationships between students and professors. The narrative corresponding to the HE student -called customer by the author- underlines the high relationship between the university employees and the student in the service provision, in which students' participation is essential for the exchange and the result lies in students themselves and not in an exchanged or rented product.

The absence of goods exchange is a key element for the study of SCB, since this type of service involves a dynamic and highly interactive process throughout interaction. The study by ^{Tronvoll (2012)} shows that each service area has different levels of interaction, so the complaint should not be considered only as a post-purchase activity. In other words, ^{Tronvoll (2012)} mentions that the level of interaction and the actors involved during service processes are crucial for CCB treatment, applying the SDL approach, which is described as an interactive exchange process that starts after the value proposition from the service provider to the customer.

Therefore, CCB in a service where the interaction between actors and customers is high and property exchange is absent, is characterized by a dynamic and interactive complaint process resulting from consumer dissatisfaction during the period of the service provider's value proposition, service interaction, and usage evaluation. This contributes to identifying that the complaining behavior of the user (learner) of a service (teaching-learning process) does not happen at a specific point and does not occur for a particular reason, but integrally develops during the experience, of which students are co-creators and their level and quality of interaction are required.

Student complaint behavior in the literature

Unlike conventional customer service, students do not usually engage in formal complaint behavior when they experience dissatisfaction. This poses a challenge for HEIS, as it is more difficult for them to improve value propositions, adopt quality measures (^{Mukherjee et al., 2009}; ^{Su & Bao, 2001}), and simply manage dissatisfaction. However, the fact that the tendency of students to formally complain is not significant does not mean they do not demonstrate their dissatisfaction using negative word-of-mouth actions (online/offline) through other instruments, such as anonymous student teaching evaluation surveys (^{Díaz-Méndez et al., 2017}). This complaint has been potentiated within the digital and hybrid environment to which HEIS had to migrate during COVID-19. Given the above, the understanding of SCB is an element that impacts beyond student satisfaction (^{Su & Bao, 2001}).

In the literature, the study of SCB has not been as comprehensive as that of CCB and has developed a rather limited theoretical framework. For example, ^{Dolinsky (1994)} applied an SCB framework exemplifying the value of the intensity of complaining behavior in a new study setting. The work considered variations in the complaint attributes, incidence components, the importance respondents attributed to their complaints, and their satisfaction with the outcome of the complaint. In a similar vein, ^{Su and Bao (2001)} presented a research on students' complaining styles, grouping them into three categories: passive receivers, private complainers, and vociferous complainers.

The result indicated that HE students do not tend to show their dissatisfaction through complaints, as there is a significant difference between the power and voice of the actors involved.

Beyond identifying key SCB elements, ^{Hart and Coates (2010)} developed an instrument to assess SCB, presenting a specific typology that they consider a taxonomy of complaint behavior oriented to the consumer, not precisely to the student. Their study explores the attitudes shown by East Asian students when they exhibit SCB towards HEIS. The authors conclude that students are not entirely comfortable with the customer label but are more likely to coin this concept when they require quick responses to their requests. Besides, they tend to complain through informal conversations rather than formal means.

There are other specific studies on SCB. For example, ^{FitzPatrick et al. (2012)} investigated Chinese international students, demonstrating that non-action responses can constitute a significant mode of complaining among this population. However, this is a reaction considered in a limited way by HEIS -even by those with established grievance processes. To identify the characteristics of emotions and the intensity of dissatisfaction experienced by students in "non-action," the authors argue the importance of an international education market and the deepening of "non-action" as a reaction to students' complaint behavior.

Another example is the research conducted by ^{Ferguson and Phau (2012)}, which aimed to identify the attitudes and complaint behaviors that arise in students in response to a specific service in which they believe there is a failure. As a novelty, these authors provide elements that address various actions that students perform externally as complaining behaviors, such as web pages created to express their disagreement, online complaints, legal actions, and even changes in the university. These external actions are described as the third dimension of grievance behavior. Adding to the previous approach is the research developed by ^{Chahal and Devi (2015)}, who developed a study to explore complaint attitudes of students towards service failures and the recovery strategies carried out by HEIS. Identifying service failure issues, whether by administrative or academic areas, emphasizes that when HEIS employ recovery efforts after a service failure they obtain significant results.

Recently, in building a deeper understanding of SCB, ^{Yoke (2018)} introduces another element based on the natural power of academics: the authority to influence student behavior is added to the HE compliant behavior. The relationship between a professor's perceived power, student dissatisfaction, and the way of complaining is demonstrated, pointing out a greater tendency to show a private or third-party complaining behavior in function of the perception of a professor's use and management of power.

Finally, and under the customer-student approach, ^{Msosa (2021)} analyzes students' perception of service failures and the CCB management system in the HE sector -specifically in South Africa-, highlighting the primary areas of service where students show complaints when faced with a situation of dissatisfaction. This author concluded that HEIS should pay special attention to students' needs, holding universities accountable for the use of value. Table 2 summarizes the studies described above.

Higher education service ecosystem complexity

Several experts on marketing and pedagogy have agreed on the enormous difference between a university and companies, due to their complex structure and nature (^{Altbach et al., 2019}; ^{Díaz-Méndez et al., 2019}). The complexity of HEIS management became more evident during the forced migration of activities to virtual and hybrid models due to the health emergency worldwide, given the difficulty involved in achieving a balance between students' needs and HEIS objectives, which created a dynamic and competitive scenario. Considering this phenomenon, ^{Shupe (1999)} highlights the challenge of managing the organizational context of HE, since among universities there is a diverse understanding of who the producer is, what the process is about, what the product is, and even who the customer is. ^{Douglas et al. (2008)} analyzed student satisfaction and considered HE a complex entity due to its intangible nature, added to the challenge posed by the multiple relationships between actors such as students, parents, government, industry, and alumni.

The multiple relationships involved in the HE service creates several challenges. In this regard, some authors have emphasized the high potential for failure in this service, since what universities provide to their students is a complex service that includes a wide range of outcomes and different perspectives for evaluation (^{Iyer & Muncy, 2008}; ^{Pucciarelli & Kaplan, 2016}). Adding to the previous idea, ^{Wueste and Fishman (2010)} emphasized the complexity and the existing differences between HE and other services, presenting a study that explains why HE cannot resemble a restaurant, strongly pointing out that acquiring knowledge and skills cannot be equated to buying a hamburger.

The complexity of HE and its proper management is not limited to the aforesaid but there are other aspects to consider, for instance, the singular disparities in the relationship university-student and customer-company. In this regard, ^{Díaz-Méndez and Gummesson (2012)} describe relevant differences between HE service and others, such as the fact that in most services customers do not expect that the supplier evaluates them with a test, or that in no other service the relationship finalizes with the assignment of a mark based on customer performance, as it occurs in HE. These authors add to the discussion on HE service complexity how in a common commercial relationship customers expect a result in exchange for the money they have paid, whereas students who have paid for an educational service and those who have not -for various reasons- also expect a result, in this case, knowledge and skills.

Strengthening the arguments of educational complexity, ^{Díaz-Méndez et al. (2017)} expose that, unlike other services, HE is by nature a pillar of social development, so its value is not related to the payment given for the service, since the perception of payment is influenced by different variables -such as the nature of universities, which may be public or private, as well as scholarships and other funding programs obtained by students, university fees established by each country, etc.- that can distort the perception of payment and, therefore, the perceived value of a service.

The complexity described above highlights the need to find management approachable to deal with it so that all factors and actors interacting in the service may be harmoniously involved in a service system designed to create value for all parties. This reflection study agrees on the complexity of HE due to the role it plays in human development, a complexity that increased when its traditional inperson methodology migrated to virtual or hybrid models, so that HEIS faced the behavior of student complaints in the way organizations and companies do, following marketing perspectives that do not necessarily result suitable to HE. Such strategies could help to ensure the permanence of students, but not their learning, which does not meet the primary objective of HE and thus undermines its sustainability.

Value co-creation in the higher education service ecosystem

This work argues that SCB treatment should be better addressed through the value co-creation perspective from the SDL approach, as several academics and marketing experts have supported, but in a different way than the CCB framework, considering the service ecosystem's complex nature, as this approach considers the interaction among actors and acknowledges that HEIS propose a value, where students have the primary role in achieving the expected value. The value co-creation perspective goes beyond the consumer orientation of marketing and implies a constant collaboration between HEIS and the student so that universities learn from their students and their needs, suggesting that this value is ultimately defined by all actors and resources in the ecosystem (^{Smørvik & Vespestad, 2020}; ^{Vargo & Lusch, 2017}).

The value co-creation axioms applied to the HE context allow us to understand that value is achieved only when it is in use and co-created by students together with HEIS, hence, the study of SCB based on the co-creation process should be perceived as a dynamic process of joint involvement (^{Tronvoll, 2007}; ^{Vargo & Lusch, 2017}). In addition, in this dynamic SCB the quality and depth of the interaction between the actors is the essence of the service exchange, since the expected result (learning) is reflected in the transformation of students themselves, through the achievement of professional and disciplinary skills. However, when students experience dissatisfaction due to a situation that -from their judgment and perspective- they consider is not adequate, it gives way to a complaint behavior that must be managed considering that their participation and contribution to the collegiate work have a direct influence on the result obtained, i.e., students are co-responsible for the results obtained during HE-related activities.

The development of this research focuses on the applicability of the value co-creation axioms of the SDL approach (^{Vargo & Lusch, 2017}; ^{Vargo et al., 2020}) specifically suitable for understanding the dynamic process of SCB: axiom 2/FP6, value is co-created by multiple actors, always including the beneficiary; axiom 4/FP10, value is always uniquely and phenomenologically determined by the beneficiary; and axiom 5/FP11, value co-creation is coordinated through actor-generated institutions and institutional arrangements. These axioms are appropriate to consider the complexity of HE service and the difference between the nature of a student and that of a customer.

A conceptual framework proposal to student complaint behavior (SCB)

The uncertainty and unprecedented period lived by humanity required the implementation of theoretical approaches that contribute to addressing the changes in students' habits and behaviors, promoting better management practices and service sustainability. In this scenario, value co-creation from the SDL approach is a strategic theory for understanding SCB. Therefore, and given that universities are the ones that generate the value proposition during the training of human capital, this approach has been adopted for their management processes (^{Gummesson et al., 2010}; ^{Stimac & Simic, 2012}). However, even though the SDL has been widely implicated in educational services, academic training and research (^{Ford & Bowen, 2008}; ^{Gummesson et al., 2010}; ^{Smørvik & Vespestad, 2020}), few studies have adopted this perspective to understand SCB (Gillespie & Zachary, 2010; ^{Tronvoll, 2007}).

In addition to emphasizing the nature and elements of the HE service ecosystem and the value co-creation process, the authors of this paper agree with ^{Tronvoll (2012)}, who identifies SCB as a dynamic behavior that occurs during value-in-use, not just post-value-in-use, and that simultaneously or separately results in a set of value-in-use experiences for the learner. Such an experience perceived as unfortunate, within the HE dynamics, happens mostly in the short term, possibly following a teaching-learning process that has been designed to achieve value co-creation in the long term, but in immediacy may generate some discomfort. Exemplifying the above, it is possible to find certain similarity when a doctor injects the patient, "generating discomfort at the moment" to achieve a benefit in the long term, so that if the service experience is only evaluated based on the static moment of the injection, the patient will surely describe it as an unfavorable experience.

Just like in the previous example, throughout the HE service experience the student first goes through a natural process of "discomfort" in the short term, due to the development of unfamiliar or challenging academic activities (^{Diaz-Mendez & Gummesson 2012}). Nevertheless, without student participation there is no professional training, since students construct their learning and are responsible for their education through feedback, opinions, and their intellectual skills exposed during the teaching-learning process (^{Dollinger et al., 2018}). In other words, students are precisely who phenomenologically determine their learning and the development of professional competencies, whose results will be observed mostly in the long term. As a result, we understand that the student is partially responsible for the negative experience that leads to a possible complaint.

During the time-of-service provision (years), especially during the virtual/hybrid methodology learning curve, the student may live one or several negative experiences, depicting a passive or active complaint behavior towards a third party (^{Hart & Coates 2010}). This negative experience maybe a teaching strategy that was not understood by the student or an element of the ecosystem that is not in the hands of the professor, for example, educational platforms, internet connection, content, or HEIS administrative and management policies (^{Karunathilake & Galdolage, 2021}). As analyzed from the value co-creation perspective, specifically from the SDL axiom 5/FP11, HEIS, as a set of human resources and capabilities, coordinate the service experience through various actors and institutional arrangements. Therefore, when understanding and managing SCB, the intervention and regulation of institutional arrangements and agreements that dictate the guidelines to check on the performance of students (beneficiaries) should not be neglected.

In line with the previous insights, axioms 2/FP6 and 4/FP10 help to understand that value co-creation in a complex ecosystem such as that of HE implies an intellectual effort by students so that they can co-create value, an effort much more complex than that made by a customer when buying a pair of shoes or acquiring a telephone service. The co-creator student needs self-preparation before the sessions, a level of information analysis, and an understanding of academic and scientific texts, as well as the application of theoretical knowledge in practical situations. In any other type of service, the beneficiary is not expected to bring this level of depth and commitment to achieve the expected value. HE students are, therefore, co-responsible for the experience that triggers or conditions the dissatisfaction or non-satisfaction causing their complaint.

SCB is an essential element in identifying areas of opportunity for universities as providers of educational services and managing student satisfaction. Consequently, an appropriate way to manage SCB seems to be the value co-creation perspective from the SDL approach, considering the dynamism of the educational service, the complexity inherent to this, the roles, characteristics, and interests of the interacting actors, and especially valuing the unique role of the student. Figure 1 represents the SCB process based on this value co-creation perspective and the service complexity.

Source: authors.

Figure 1 Student complaint behavior process considering higher education value co-creation and its complexity.