Descriptive Evidence on the Role of Corporate Brands in Marketing Higher Education Services

Abstract

he intangible and inseparable nature of services is generally thought to increase the risk perceived by consumers when making purchase decisions. This higher level of perceived risk arises because, relative to physical goods, services are characterized by higher levels of experience and credence qualities and lower levels of search qualities. Building brand equity for a service is increasingly recognized as a means of mitigating that risk and creating a strong identity for a service in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The service sector chosen for the empirical research was higher education services in Egypt. In essence, higher education is a professional service characterized by a high level of experience qualities which make the purchase risky and means that branding is important as a source of reassurance to students about the quality of what they will receive. The paper begins with a brief overview of relevant literature and then proceeds to outline the components of brand equity providing the conceptual framework which guides the research. Subsequently, the empirical work is presented, focusing on the comparison between experienced and inexperienced consumers to assess the extent to which corporate brands are able to communicate information about key features of a service. Finally, the results of the survey are discussed and the managerial implications are presented.

Antecedents and consequences of trust: an e-tail branding perspective

“…Few studies explored online security and privacy as antecedents of online trust (Koksal and Penez, 2015). Although, previous studies investigated the antecedents and consequences of online trust from different perspectives such as technical (e.g., web security, Mourad et al, 2010;Koksal and Penez, 2015), they failed to investigate the same from an etail branding perspective which plays the key role in attracting shoppers (Das, 2014a).…”

Service Science: Toward Systematic Service System Innovation

“…Both groups were embedded in five different contexts: healthcare (Park et al [44], Paul and MacDonald [45], Teytelman and Larson [60]), higher education (Larson and Gomez Diaz [29], Mourad et al [36]), information and commuications technology-enabled service contexts (Gera and Xia [21], Hsu [22], Teng et al [58]), professional and government services (Breidbach et al [7], Osmonbekov and Bernard [41]), and manufacturing and retail (Hünecke and Gunkel [23]). …”

“…The first considers how service operations can be managed internally, for example, by improving their effectiveness and efficiency (Saviano et al [52]) or by managing service quality (Salvador-Ferrer [50]). Typical elements of interest include the organizational structure and design of workflows (Espinosa et al [19]), the role and performance of service employees (Osmonbekov and Bernard [41]), or the impact of the service provider's brand on the performance of service operations (Mourad et al [36]). The second group considers how service operations can be managed externally, for example, by exploring how service supply chains, systems, and networks can be made more agile (Caroll et al 2010) or sustainable (Wolfson et al [68]), which improves their overall performance.…”

Do the Educational Service Characteristics and Perceptions Matters to Intention to Recruit Master of Management’s Alumni in Central Java?

“…Recently, many international studies of marketing higher education only focused on satisfying students and attracted new students to enroll the universities (Kara & Deshields:2004, Sahin: 2007, Scott: 2008, Chou:2010, Bradford &Wyatt:2010, Mourad et al, 2010. Those studies conclude that it is important for universities to build student's satisfaction, and build a good marketing strategies not only to survive but to win sustainable competitive advantage I higher education sector.…”