A Research on the Reflection of Online Brand Promise in Open and Distance Education

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether open and distance education institutions, which are known as mega universities, utilize information and communication technologies in education and reflect the brand promises online, and to determine which brand values (functional and emotional) they use in communication.This study on online brand communication in open and distance education institutions is a descriptive study to determine the current situation. The research data were collected from the qualitative measurement tools by the content analysis method. The scope of the research consists of the websites open and distance education institutions which are called mega universities, with over 100,000 students. The web site of thirteen universities, which were selected by means of meaningful sampling among these universities, were examined with content analysis method within the scope of the research and the collected data were then evaluated by fuzzy logic and clustering analysis methods. As a result, the universities that are examined reflect the online brand promise through different websites with different scores on the variables that make up the functional and emotional values and there are differences in reflecting the brand promises among the universities, and emotional values are more important than functional values.