The value co-creation concept has become a marketing answer to today's challenges, the economy is facing. The field of higher education (HE) is experiencing the same pressure of outer factors as any other service industry. As a result, service providers (colleges and universities), as well as customers (students, graduates and employers) are dissatisfied with the quality of services and the level of generated value. The aim of this paper is to discuss how universities can use value co-creation concept to improve the situation. We consider social media to become engagement platforms for enabling value cocreation. Therefore, this paper discusses their current usage and perspectives for Ukrainian HE in creating mutual value. Top-five Ukrainian universities in the Webometrics rating are analyzed in terms of their SM activities on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. The value itself is considered a multi-dimensional category and the co-creation directions are analyzed in terms of the theory of consumption values (TCV) and from the perspective of two customer groups-students and employers. Recommendations include practical tools on engaging students and employers to the VCC process, grouped by the type of the value obtained.

The current research aims at analyzing the social media activity of the universities in EaP countries. During the COVID-19 pandemic, universities had to transfer their education processes and enrollment campaigns online. University management had to introduce new tools for communication and interaction to ensure the efficacy of cooperation between the university community, students, teaching staff, and other stakeholders. In this research, the authors analyze which factors affected the dynamics and directions of customer engagement with Universities' social media and how. The authors propose a framework to reveal the role of countries’ digital environment, educational environment, and university’s SM activity in increasing ER of university stakeholders during the COVID-19 pandemic on Facebook and Instagram. The authors outline managerial proposals for universities, including analytics-based SM content creation and planning, communicating socially essential issues.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased the role of social media in the communication policy of educational institutions. Ensuring the effective use of social networks to communicate with target audiences requires universities to understand, among other things, the importance of cultural context for the audience’s engagement.We analyzed the engagement rates (ER) in Facebook and Instagram for the most influential universities in the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries to determine the influence of the country’s cultural characteristics.The study examines two hypotheses. H1: Stakeholders in collectivist cultures with a high level of power distance are more likely to increase online engagement when limited in offline communication. H2: High uncertainty avoidance countries with long-term orientation will demonstrate broader social media engagement.The results showed that the dynamics of stakeholder activity in the social networks Facebook and Instagram for the most influential universities in the Eastern Partnership countries do not depend on the country’s cultural profile.Thus, we can conclude that universities can expand their presence in the digital communication space while addressing representatives of their target audiences from different countries without differentiating their communication messages. The study results also indicate the prospects for expanding remote students’ mobility programs as they will not require different approaches to effective digital communication. JEL classіfіcatіon: M30, M39, I20, I29

The article substantiates the need for educational institutions to use Data Mining technology as a key to successful management decisions in modern realities. The study focuses on working with social media data. The authors emphasized the lack of attention to this issue among both foreign and Ukrainian scientists. The article outlines the algorithm for collecting and transmitting primary data obtained as a result of monitoring the activity of educational institutions in social networks to form models of various types of their actions. The model presented by the authors includes four stages. Stages one and two provide the list of factors / metrics that can be included in the model. These factors require an appropriate and high-quality data collection process. At the next stage, the authors propose data clustering as the most important process for the future use of social network data. It is emphasized that the formation of clusters will depend on the tasks facing the management teams of the educational market. The authors give several examples of such clustering but point out that the list is not exhaustive and can be significantly expanded. An important aspect of the availability of such databases is access to information not only for teachers, but also for all interested university staff. At the same time, each user (students, teachers, staff, administration) will receive data relevant to their requests and needs. The developed methodology will help increase the efficiency of management decision-making and implementation and provide an opportunity to justify the parameters of successful innovation in educational institutions in many respects, including the development of educational programs, implementation of new certification programs and disciplines, other services, etc.

This paper reports the results of neuromarketing research for artworks. It was conducted among young people, students of non-art specialties, for nine different widely known art pieces with the help of eyetracking and emotional scanning equipment.The aim of the experiment is to determine (1) whether viewers concentrate more on the representational art compared to abstracts art, (2) whether any correlation between the viewing time and the evoked emotions exists, and (3) whether there is any difference between the monitored emotions and those people articulate (in other words, to what extend artwork viewers tell the truth).The result demonstrates a slightly higher preference in looking at the representational paintings. But we do not notice any correlation between the subjective liking of the painting and the time spent looking at it. An essential difference is recorded for the emotions fixed technically and those reported by the viewers.The paper also suggests several implications for gallery marketing. JEL сlassification: M31, Z11