The marketing strategies of universities in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Universities in the UK are facing huge changes to their environment, in terms of both supply of funding and level of demand for their courses. One of the most dramatic recent changes has been the alteration in status of the former polytechnics to fully fledged universities. In order to find out how both old and new universities are responding to this rapidly changing environment, we sent questionnaires to a number of senior staff. Based on 131 responses (81 from old universities, 50 from new), we have been able to paint a picture of how marketing is undertaken in these two segments. We report on how these institutions perceive their marketing task, and also the extent to which these two traditionally different sectors agree on the role marketing plays in their sector. Our research clearly indicates these two groups of institutions have fundamentally different approaches to operationalising their marketing strategies.

Internal branding in universities and the lessons learnt from the past: the significance of employee brand support and transformational leadership

“…University employees are heavily influential in representing higher education institutions to the public (for example, in terms of staff reputation, research output and top quality teaching) (Naude & Ivy, 1999;Ivy, 2001). Baker and Balmer (1997, p.367) also concern the fact that "individual members of a university are, by definition, experts in their own right and so consider that they are the best judge of how to fulfil this role".…”

Factores que inciden en la disminución en el ingreso de estudiantes en los programas de Administración de Empresas y Contaduría Pública de la Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia, sede Neiva

“…Bavakutty, Nasirudheen y Abdul Majee (2008), Marringe (2006), García y Organista (2006), Hemsley y Oplataka (2006), Naude y Ivy (1999), y Cruz (2004 coinciden en que las instituciones de educación superior compiten cada vez más por la incorporación de estudiantes, creándose la necesidad de investigar su perfil en busca de aumentar su participación en el mercado. Para poder entender esta problemática es menester estudiar: la teoría del comportamiento del consumidor de Brue y McConell (1997), quienes presentan cómo los consumidores miden la utilidad que pueden usufructuar del bien o servicio adquirido; el postulado de la mezcla de mercados de Kottler (2002); los aportes sobre la variable imagen como la impresión de conjunto producida en la mente de la opinión acerca de una organización (Barich y Kotler, 1991), y lo difícil de mantenerla en el tiempo (Manes, 1999, p. 39); y la imagen corporativa, que es fundamental en la planeación estratégica ya que crea un valor para la empresa (Capriotti, 2008).…”

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

“…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).…”

“…And the fact is that, in the business field, customer satisfaction seems a natural aspiration, consideration of competitors' strengths and weaknesses is fully integrated within the strategic planning process and the relation between market orientation and performance is frequently measured through its impact on profitability, sales or asset return. But in the HE sector it is a more complex matter to establish who constitutes the principal customer (Naude and Ivy 1999;Helgesen 2008;Wasmer and Bruner II 2009), to distinguish the borderline between competitors and collaborators when thinking about other HEIs (Liao 2008;Bugandwa 2009;Bugandwa 2013), and to determine what constitutes the most appropriate way of measuring performance (Liao 2008;Duque 2014). These are the key aspects that we feel require deeper exploration if we are to enable application of the marketing concept in HEIs.…”

“…Beyond the semantic question of the appropriateness of the term customer to refer to students, lies the operational issue as to who university customers are, accepting, as we have remarked, that students are considered to be a stakeholder of overriding interest. In the literature other collectives that could be regarded as customers or stakeholders for the university have been described (Kotler and Fox 1995;Naude and Ivy 1999;Marzo et al 2007). One of the most detailed reviews in this regard establishes nine stakeholders or types of customers of the university (Marzo et al 2007) and in it a broad consensus is observed among academics in considering students, employers, teaching and research personnel and society as the main customers or stakeholders for the university.…”