CONSUMER SATISFACTION ON E-LEARNING BEFORE AND

AFTER PANDEMIC

Dr. V. VIJAYALAKSHMI
Professor, Department of Commerce (BME), Saveetha College of Liberal Arts and Sciences,
SIMATS, CHENNAI, Tamilnadu, India.

Dr. SHIBE REMO

Professor, Department of Business Administration (BME), Saveetha College of Liberal Arts and
Sciences, SIMATS, CHENNAI, Tamilnadu, India.

Dr. V. SENTHIL KUMARAN

Associate Professor, Department of Business Administration (BME), Saveetha College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences, SIMATS, CHENNAI, Tamilnadu, India.

Abstract:
The pandemic created an irreversible trend in many sectors, like Marketing, HRM,
even in Educational Institutions, the pattern of education was completely changed and many
adopted to the new changing trends, but some are unable to adopt, in this situation it is
important to study about the consumer satisfaction on e-learning, whether it gives enough
factors to satisfy the users or not, how the user’s satisfaction level affected before and after,
the main aim of this study is to find out e-learning is successful before the pandemic or after
the pandemic, past 3 years sets the trend for new kind of practical living, that is digital-era,
in this digital era, the study about the consumer satisfaction regarding e-learning give
benefits to the educational institution and its marketing implication to widen their
educational products, in this study the researchers’ using Primary data collected from
various individual via Online created Google Forms, and Secondary data collected from
several previously published research articles, theses, websites and blogs.
Keywords: Consumer Satisfaction, Online Education, E-learning Products, Pandemic
Effects.

Introduction:
“The education sector in India, which was hitherto slow to change, has been
witnessing a massive transformation recently with changing job landscape, technological
disruptions, demand for quality education and the implementation of National Education
Policy (NEP) 2020. The pandemic caused further shocks to the system with schools forced to
shut down during the lockdown period, and the transition of students and teachers to online
teaching-learning. In India, around 250 million students were affected due to school closures
at the onset of lockdown induced by COVID-19.” – (Narayanan Ramasamy, Oct 2021) from
the above author, it is clearly mentioned the effects of pandemic on educational institutions
and learning of students, the adverse effects of cov-19 was overcome by transforming of
educational field from offline to online classes.
“Online teaching was beneficial in a number of ways –
1. Through online teaching, the teaching process becomes possible from home. This enables
the students to save their time which they have to give while attending physical classes. Now
the students can manage this saved time in other activities to enrich their personality.
2. Online teaching enables the parents to look after their children and engage themself in the
education of their children.
3. Online teaching is beneficial because it enables the students to record the lecture and attend
it as many times as they want to understand the concept.
4. Online teaching, which was promoted by the government, gives the opportunity to all
students of the country to get education from one of the best teachers selected by the
education department.
Online teaching has become a medium of teaching/learning process during pandemic
but it has certain limitations too. Online teaching requires electronic gadgets like
smartphones/ Tablet/ Laptop/ Computer and proper internet facility to both teachers and
students. In India, the per person availability of smartphones is less as compared to other
developed countries. A large section of Indian population comes under middle income and
low-income families. So, they could not afford to give smartphones to their children to
continue their education. There is less internet availability in remote areas. In most of the
north eastern states, the internet speed is very low because of lack of investment by Telecom
enterprises. According to a report published by UNESCO, the educational inequalities
increased during Covid 19 pandemic. The main reason for increase in educational inequalities
was lack of resources for the children of marginal sections of society.
There are also scenes in the remote areas where the students have to go to cities or
towns for proper internet facility to continue their education.
Online teaching became an important medium and compulsion also to give education
to the students during Covid 19 pandemic. It is beneficial for the students in some ways but it
has limitations too. It is beneficial to continue the teaching process. The increasing popularity
of online teaching in Covid 19 pandemic and the role played by it to continue the learning
process sets an example to tackle such types of problems in future. Government should also
try to reduce the educational inequalities during Covid 19 pandemic by making the teaching
process available at a platform which can be assessed by a large number of students.”
(Ashutosh Pandey, 2021).

Objectives of the Study:

1. To find out which type of device was used for E-Learning.
2. To find out whether respondents engaged themselves in e-learning before pandemic or
not.
3. To analyze how e-learning will be the future learning technology.
4. To know about the satisfaction level of e-learning by analyzing factors influencing e-
learning.
Literature Review:
1. Alqahtani, A. Y., & Rajkhan, A. A. (2020), “During the COVID-19 pandemic,
educational institutions were shut down all over the world, which impacted over 60% of
students and caused a massive disruption of the education system. The goal of this paper
was to identify the critical success factors for E-learning during COVID-19 using the
multi-criteria Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Preference by
Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) techniques to enhance the educational process.
Data were generated by interviewing 69 E-learning managers in educational institutions
during COVID-19 based on defined evaluation criteria and E-learning approaches
through several channels. We found that technology management, support from
management, increased student awareness to use E-learning systems, and demanding a
high level of information technology from instructors, students, and universities were the
most influential factors for E-learning during COVID-19. Among the five learning
systems, blended learning was the most suitable learning system to practice. These results
demonstrated that, regardless of how extraordinary the technology is in an educational
institution, the readiness of E-learning execution played a large role in boosting the
educational process during the COVID-19 pandemic”.
2. Asnan Baber (2021), “The pandemic of COVID-19 has disrupted normal life and
working in almost all parts of the world. The learning process should continue and e-
learning is the best alternative to replace the conventional classroom setting. E-learning
programs and courses were already available for people who were mentally and
economically ready for such learning. The severity of the pandemic has forced students to
 learn through this mode and their acceptance of this system is the point of exploration.
The results suggested that all factors were positively influencing the behavioral intention
to use and accept the e-learning system by the learners during this pandemic. The data
were analyzed using the partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM)
approach”.
3. Lynch, Maggie (2020), “The onset of the COVID-19 virus has tested education, social,
and economic structures as the pandemic has spread around the world. UNESCOs
monitoring indicates that over 181 countries have implemented nationwide school
closures, impacting more than 1.5 billion students. Though many universities have some
experience in online learning, they are not ready to move from under 25% of curriculum
already developed to 100% of curriculum being available with teachers ready to go
online. K-12 education is struggling with most districts having never invested in an e-
learning infrastructure or established a technology backbone for e-learning delivery. The
pandemic shines a light on the unequal access to the technologies necessary to be
successful either as an online learner or as an instructor suddenly responsible for
delivering content remotely”.
4. Zethembe Mseleku (2020), “In conclusion, the Covid-19 outbreak has introduced a lot of
challenges for higher education institutions across the world. Lockdown and other Covid-
19 regulations has forced a sudden shift from face-to-face learning to online learning in
many academic institutions. While this shift was considered a possible solution to higher
education crises in the era of Covid-19, it is shown in this study that this shift came with
numerous challenges for students and academics. As discussed in this study, these
challenges include; difficulties to adjust by lectures and students, connectivity issues,
unconducive physical environment, mental health related issues, lack of basic needs, lack
of teaching and learning resources”.
5. Mohammad Ziaul Hoq (2020), “The contemporary literature reviews as well as the
survey results visibly specify that it is crucial to incorporate e-learning in education
system. This incorporation into education symbolizes a move of the responsibility of
teachers from dispenser of learning materials to catalysts of students. The outcomes of
this research offered the management the precise views of the teachers towards e-
learning. In general, the teachers are very positive about e-learning. In addition, this
research can support the instructors in creating quality materials that may improve the
quality of e-learning. On the other hand, the authority and the management can use this
 research to tackle the constraints of the e-learning and offer better methods to generate a
suitable e-learning atmosphere”.
6. Almaiah, M.A., Al-Khasawneh, A. & Althunibat (2020), “This paper contributes to
critical challenges and factors that influence the e-learning system usage during COVID-
19 pandemic. Based on the results, the respondents stated that the critical factors that
affect the usage of e-learning system and should universities take them into the future
plans were: (1) technological factors, (2) e-learning system quality factors, (3) cultural
aspects, (4) self-efficacy factors and (5) trust factors. In addition, the results indicated that
there are three main challenges that impede the usage of e-learning system, namely, (1)
change management issues, (2) e-learning system technical issues and (3) financial
support issues”.
7. Sakkir, G., Dollah, S., & Ahmad, J. (2020), “The results of this study showed that there
are many E- learning media that the lecturers used in delivering the materials. The use of
that media in learning process is less interested to the students. It was proved by the
results of students’ perception. These scores are categorized as disagree or negative
scores of perceptions if they are confirmed by using a Likert Scale. There are no students
who strongly agree with the current e-learning process, there are only 3 students who
agree, 11 students say they are moderate (55%), 5 students disagree and 1 student
strongly disagree. However, the use of e-learning media in the current learning process is
an absolute necessity. Favorite learning media that are often used by lecturers in teaching,
such as Zoom, WhatsApp and LMS, while students prefer to be taught with WhatsApp,
Zoom, Google Classroom, LMS, and Quizziz”.

Data analysis and Interpretation:

Table 1: Age of the Respondents
Cumulative
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Percent
Below 20 9 18.0 18.0 18.0
21-30 30 60.0 60.0 78.0
31-40 10 20.0 20.0 98.0
41-50 1 2.0 2.0 100.0
Above 50 0 0.0 0.0 100.0
Total 50 100.0 100.0
Source: Primary Data
Table 2: Gender of the Respondents
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative
 Percent
Male 29 58.0 58.0 58.0
Female 21 42.0 42.0 100.0
Total 50 100.0 100.0
Source: Primary Data
Table 3: Annual Family Income of the Respondents
Cumulative
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Percent
Less than 2,00,000 4 8.0 8.0 8.0
2,50,001-5,00,000 38 76.0 76.0 84.0
5,00,001-7,50,000 8 16.0 16.0 100.0
Above 7,50,000 0 0.0 0.0 100.0
Total 50 100.0 100.0
Source: Primary Data
From the above tables, we can see that, 58% of the respondents are Male and 42% of
the respondents are female (Table 2), 60% of the respondents are aged between 21 and 30,
20% of the respondents are aged between 31 and 40 (Table 1), most of the respondents
studied UG Degree (52%), and 62% of the respondents pursuing their PG degree, 50% of the
respondents are working as an Private Employee, 76% of the respondents are Unmarried, and
24% of the respondents 24% are Married, 76% of the respondents are having their annual
family income ranges between 2,00,001 to 5,00,000, 72% of the respondents are having a
family size around 3 to 5.
58% of the respondents using Smartphones as their primary device for E-Learning,
Majority of the respondents engaging in E-Learning for the past 1-2 years, 56% of the
respondents predominantly accepted that E-Learning was comfortable for learning new
things, 82% of the employees do believed that digital learning will be the future, majority of
the respondents attended (80%) online class before the pandemic for their various courses,
80% of the respondents purely accepted that their course syllabus was covered through E-
Learning.
Table 4: T-Test for the features influencing E-Learning before and after pandemic
Std. Std. Error
N Mean T value Sig. Rank
Deviation Mean
Interaction with the
50 1.66 1.118 .158 10.501 .000 5
lecturer
Course Completion 50 2.32 1.220 .172 13.451 .000 1
Effectiveness of
50 2.14 1.294 .183 11.696 .000 2
Teaching
Available of
50 1.90 1.249 .177 10.752 .000 4
Technical Resources
Effectiveness in 50 2.04 1.245 .176 11.589 .000 3
 Evaluation of
Students' Performance
Source: Primary Data
In the above T-Test analysis, the mean ranges from 1.66 to 2.32, Course Completion
is the major influencing feature of E-Learning before and after pandemic (T Value = 13.451,
Rank 1) followed by Effectiveness of Teaching (T Value = 11.696, Rank 2), respondents
consider Effectiveness in Evaluation of Students' Performance as a third primary feature (T
Value = 11.589, Rank 3), followed by Available of Technical Resources (T Value = 10.752,
Rank 4), and Interaction with the lecturer (T Value = 10.501, Rank 5)

Conclusion:
E-Learning was not a new thing which was raised after the pandemic, it was there
before the pandemic itself, but not utilized up to the mark, but after the pandemic, people was
pushed to use it without no choice. Because of this new market many new choices were built
within this sector, new technologies were introduced to make it easier to use for everyone,
students, teachers, lecturers. From the above study authors conclude that customers are
satisfied by E-Learning before and after pandemic, by way of using new technologies and
methods of teaching, and consumers believed that (82%) e-learning will be the future
learning technology.

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