Measuring communication impact for university advertising materials

Abstract

A total of 20 per cent of Australian universities are ranked in the top 500 exporters and since 1987 international student growth in Australia has exceeded 60 per cent each year. Few investigations have been directed to measuring the effectiveness of international advertising and promotional material. This article examines this aspect with a focus on content analysis of the international student study guides. The investigation used a qualitative research approach comprising a blend of the convergent interview technique and Delphi method. The outcomes were that there was a significant disparity between student perceived needs and those communicated by the universities printed material. Although the methodology was created to investigate the effectiveness of promotional publications in higher education, the methodology can be applied to other industries where there is a high interface between written advertising material and the recipient.

Public Perception of the Quality of Academic Education Program

“…They also compare the attributes and benefits against the price or costs of the program. These findings are consistent with many research findings especially designed for students' evaluation of the education program (Gatfield, Braker, & Graham, 1999;Bindsardi & Ekwulugo, 2003;Ho & Hung, 2008).…”

“…Gatfield, Braker, and Graham (1999) found that reputation, quality of teachers and resources, and campus lives are important quality factors for students. Similarly, Bindsardi and Ekwulugo (2003) found that the students' choice of institutions was affected by education standard of that institution and its credibility and employment opportunities.…”

“…With reference to different literature on choice factors for students of higher education, five quality indicators belonging to inputs, process and outputs were used as determinants of quality perceptions. They were reputation, physical facilities, quality of teachers, curriculum and employment opportunities for students (Bindsardi & Ekwulugo, 2003;Gatfield, Braker, & Graham, 1999;Ho & Hung, 2008). Therefore, this study empirically examined the influence of these quality indicators on perceived quality and perceived value; and relationship among the variables.…”

The corporate brand and strategic direction: Senior business school managers’ cognitions of corporate brand building and management

“…In particular reference to business schools, extant research has, for example, focussed on business school programmes (Nichollis et al, 1995), school rankings and accreditations (Siemens et al, 2005), marketing activities and communications (Gatfield, et al, 1999;Gray et al, 2003), institutional positioning/repositioning (Bennis and O'Toole, 2004;Pfeffer and Fong, 2004) and reputational damage (Siebert and Martin, 2013).…”

Higher Education Marketing: A Comparative Analysis of Public and Foundation Universities in Turkey

“…As stated by Conway et al (1994: 31), "students can be either considered as customers (with courses as the higher education products) or as products with the employers being the customers". Considering prospective students as the customers, while some studies examined the factors that influence students' choice of universities and their programs (Gatfield et al, 1999;Grey et al, 2003;Hesketh and Knight, 1999), some others focused on the critical success factors for marketing education (Mazzarol, 1998), main effects of institutional image and reputation on customer loyalty and market positioning (Nguyen and LeBlanc, 2001), the viability of strategic planning goals in the HEIs (Rindfleish, 2003) and the effect of marketing communications (Hesketh and Knight, 1999;Gatfield et al, 1999;Grey et al, 2003;Mortimer, 1997). Rockholz (2002) states that until very recently marketing activities of HEIs were irregular, instinctive and at smaller scales and that swiftly improving marketing applications have made an impact on education services as well and made it possible for such services to be handled in a more conscious way and at larger scales.…”