Examining Competitive Advantage in Education Service Industry: Empirical Evidence in the Overseas Education Consultant Industry in Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesian students' interest in continuing their studies abroad keeps increasing by 35% yearly, leading to an ideal market potential for overseas institutions. The yearly growth of Indonesian students is crucial for abroad education agency services. Therefore, this study aimed to contribute to theoretical and managerial aspects by examining the effects of international experience (IE), entrepreneurial orientation (EO), and company reputation (CR) on business performance (BP) and competitive advantage (CA) as mediation. Furthermore, verification descriptive was utilized with one cross-sectional collection time to obtain 106 companies. The results showed two insignificant hypotheses, namely IE and EO toward BP. The mediation test with the SOBEL test indicated that the IE variable indirectly affected BP and was interpreted as complete mediation. Furthermore, the EO variable directly affected BP after controlling CA. This was interpreted as partial mediation, and a company with CA in this business would affect its performance.