Delphi study of the future of marketing of higher education

The marketing orientation as a university management philosophy: a framework to guide its application

“…For the field we are dealing with, that of HE, in the early 1980s Keller (1983) predicted a growing importance of the marketing application in the sector and, since then, several authors have agreed on the desirability of adopting a marketing perspective (for instance , Çetin 2004;Flavián and Lozano 2004;Ma and Todorovic 2011;Filip 2012;Stimac and Simic 2012;Kalenskaya et al 2013;Tanrikulu and Gelibolu 2015;Tran et al 2015). Further, a gradual increase is observed in the number of universities that incorporate marketing principles and practices within management (Kotler and Fox 1995;Yavas and Shemwell 1996;Newman 2002;Soutar and Turner 2002;Hemsley-Brown and Oplatka 2006;Hayes 2007;Liao 2008;Curtis et al 2009;Wasmer and Bruner II 2009;Hemsley-Brown and Oplatka 2010;Cardoso et al 2011;Filip 2012;García Sanchis 2012;Kalenskaya et al 2013;Tran et al 2015) and that show more concern about becoming market oriented (Mavondo et al 2008;Ressler and Abratt 2009;Cardoso et al 2011;Gattermann et al 2012;Kalenskaya et al 2013;Tran et al 2015), especially among private institutions (Bardo et al 1990;Maringe and Gibbs 2009;Cardoso et al 2011).…”

“…Among the most powerful causes of this delay in the application of marketing principles and practices in the HE field is the scant training and insufficient expertise that many university managers possess in this area (Newman 2002;Maringe 2005;Hayes 2007;Filip 2012). Perhaps that is why, in many institutions, marketing is still "under suspicion" for being a concept imported from the business world (Naude and Ivy 1999;Maringe 2005;Hayes 2007) and, as pointed out by Nedbalová et al (2014), different authors "consider marketing to be an evil practice which damages education by using business techniques (p.178)".…”

“…Among the most powerful causes of this delay in the application of marketing principles and practices in the HE field is the scant training and insufficient expertise that many university managers possess in this area (Newman 2002;Maringe 2005;Hayes 2007;Filip 2012). Perhaps that is why, in many institutions, marketing is still "under suspicion" for being a concept imported from the business world (Naude and Ivy 1999;Maringe 2005;Hayes 2007) and, as pointed out by Nedbalová et al (2014), different authors "consider marketing to be an evil practice which damages education by using business techniques (p.178)". Consequently it encounters much resistance both from citizens and academics (Maringe and Mourad 2012;Winter and O'Donohue 2012;Alnawas 2015), who mistake it for a mere tool for recruiting students, generating income and raising funds (Conway et al 1994;Mainardes et al 2014), and disapprove of principles that have arisen in the business field being brought into the sector (Curtis et al 2009;Natale and Doran 2012;Winter and O'Donohue 2012) along with concepts that until recently were foreign to them, such as "competition", "competitive advantage", "customers", "client satisfaction" or "market" (Bugandwa 2009;Alnawas 2015).…”

“…Consequently it encounters much resistance both from citizens and academics (Maringe and Mourad 2012;Winter and O'Donohue 2012;Alnawas 2015), who mistake it for a mere tool for recruiting students, generating income and raising funds (Conway et al 1994;Mainardes et al 2014), and disapprove of principles that have arisen in the business field being brought into the sector (Curtis et al 2009;Natale and Doran 2012;Winter and O'Donohue 2012) along with concepts that until recently were foreign to them, such as "competition", "competitive advantage", "customers", "client satisfaction" or "market" (Bugandwa 2009;Alnawas 2015). This reticence, however, is the result of a misunderstanding of the discipline (Maringe 2004;Maringe 2005;Hayes 2007;Maringe and Mourad 2012), whereby it is perceived as being centred on the generation of profits and is frequently taken to be synonymous with advertising and sales (Liu 1998;Hayes 2007;Hemsley-Brown and Oplatka 2010).…”

“…We coincide with other authors (Maringe 2004;Maringe 2005;Maringe and Mourad 2012) in the view that the origin of the resistance is to be found in a poor understanding of marketing discipline. This resistance and lack of familiarity is even observed among university managers themselves (Newman 2002;Maringe 2005;Hayes 2007;Filip 2012), which proves to be particularly problematic given that it is they who ought to spearhead the change, spreading marketing philosophy among the rest of the staff of the universities they direct (Tran et al 2015). Consequently, having once set out the reasons that lead us to the opinion that marketing philosophy, correctly applied, is eminently suitable for balancing the interests of universities, stakeholders and society, we propose a framework designed to facilitate its implementation in universities.…”