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IJTEM Editorial Board Editors-in-Chief:

Purnendu Tripathi, IGNOU, India Siran Mukerji, IGNOU, India

Associate Editors: Gilbert Ahamer, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria Catherine Atwong, Fullerton U., USA Robert Barbour, Unitec, New Zealand Clare Blanchard, U. of Chester, UK Doug Davies, U. of Canberra, Australia Rommel De Vera, Adamson U., Phillipines Elizabeth Donnellan, Kaplan U., USA Ruth Gannon Cook, DePaul U., USA Deryn Graham, Unitec, New Zealand Joan Guardia, U. of Barcelona, Spain Jace Hargis, U. of the Pacific, USA Jill Jameson, U. of Greenwich, UK Piet Kommers, U. of Twente, The Netherlands Don Krug, U. of British Columbia, Canada Kathryn Ley, U. of Houston - Clear Lake, USA Felix Maringe, Southampton U., UK Robson Marinho, Andrews U., USA Hanne Mawhinney, U. of Maryland College Park, USA Rudy McDaniel, U. of Central Florida, USA Pak Tee Ng, Nanyang Technological U., Singapore Carolyn Stevenson, Kaplan U., USA Kenneth D. Strang, U. of Technology - Sydney, Australia Xavier M. Triado, U. of Barcelona, Spain Michael Vallance, Future U. Hakodate, Japan Kevin Yee, U. of Central Florida, USA IGI Editorial:

Heather A. Probst, Senior Editorial Director Jamie M. Wilson, Director of Journal Publications Chris Hrobak, Journal Production Manager Chriten Croley, Journal Production Assistant

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International Editorial Review Board:

Omar M. Al Rayes, Dar Al Uloom U., Saudi Arabia Pilar Aparicio, U. of Barcelona, Spain Mukta Arora, IMS, India Payal Arora, Erasmus U., The Netherlands Larry D. Burton, Andrews U., USA Katalin Csoma, Embassy of Canada in Budapest, Hungary Thomas Duus Henriksen, The Danish School of Education–U. of Aarhus, Denmark Aaron Chia Yuan Hung, Columbia U., USA Karen P. Kaun, Knowledge iTrust, USA Karin Levinsen, Aarhus U., Denmark Neo Mai, Multimedia U., Malaysia Davison Mupinga, Kent State U., USA Eunhee Jung O’Neil, Center for International Virtual Schooling, USA Ahmed Rafi, Multimedia U., Malaysia

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Rikki Rimor, The Open U. of Israel, Israel Ruth Robbins, U. of Houston Downtown, USA Yigal Rosen, U. of Haifa, Israel Janet Salmons, Vision2Lead, USA David Stein, The Ohio State U., USA Gabriele Strohschen, DePaul U., USA CWS Sukati, U. of Swaziland, Swaziland Sharmi Surianarain, The Resolve Group, South Africa Brian Vander Schee, Aurora U., USA Victor Wang, California State U., USA Constance Wanstreet, The Ohio State U., USA Lynn Wilson, Sea Trust Institute, USA Peter Charles Woods, Multimedia U., Malaysia Darwish Abdulrahman Yousef, UAE U., UAE Zuochen Zhang, U. of Windsor, Canada

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International Journal of Technology and Educational Marketing An official publication of the Information Resources Management Association The Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Technology and Educational Marketing (IJTEM) would like to invite you to consider submitting a manuscript for inclusion in this scholarly journal. MISSION: The mission of International Journal of Technology and Educational Marketing (IJTEM) is to provide an international forum for the advancement and application of different aspects of marketing management and technological innovations in all the segments of education, including school education, K-12 education, higher education, online, distance, and continuing education, and nonformal education. Covering diverse socio-economic, geographic, and differing cultural perspectives and the application of marketing ideas together, this journal publishes scholarly articles on the latest findings in technology and applications of marketing in the education sector.

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COVERAGE: Topics to be discussed in this journal include (but are not limited to) the following: • Advertising and promotion of academic programs and • Quality, gaps analysis, and educational institutions e-grievance redressal in • Analysis of consumer behavior in development of new institutional support services educational programs • Role of technology in promotional • Competitive pricing decisions in new academic programs mix and education • Digital service and education • Societal marketing and education • Direct marketing of educational programs • Strategic collaboration and ISSN 2155-5605 • Education product management transnational education marketing eISSN 2155-5613 • Educational and allied services marketing • Strategic marketing in education Published semi-annually • Educational branding planning and implementation • Educational institution corporate identity • Student as customers and • Educational marketing and e-communications institutions as corporate houses • Educational marketing for community support and social • Technologies for marketing of educational Programs development • Technology and academic program life cycle management • Educational marketing management • Technology and educational marketing • Educational marketing research • Technology and educational services marketing • Educational product management & and differentiation • Technology and relationship marketing for sustainable educational • Electronic educational marketing strategies and paradigms development • E-marketing and education • Technology enabled customer (students) relationship management • Ethical issues in the marketing of education • Technology enhanced educational partnership management • Globalization and educational marketing • Technology for quality assurance in educational programs and support • Green marketing for education services • Innovations in technology for educational marketing • Technology for transnational partnership and collaboration in • Interactive technologies for marketing education programs education • International educational marketing strategies and • Technology in educational partnership management technology • Technology in educational program development • International partnership and franchising • Technology in services marketing of education • Management of technology and marketing-led change in • Technology in transnational strategies for education education • Trademark of academic programs • Market segmentation and education • Virtual spaces and educational marketing • Marketing mix and education • Web 2.0 technologies and educational marketing • Marketing philosophy and ideology in education marketing • Network marketing of educational institutions • Online marketing for educational programs All submissions should be emailed to: • Pricing of academic programs Purnendu Tripathi and Siran Mukerji, Editors-in-Chief • Program positioning in global market [email protected] and [email protected]

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International Journal of Technology Educational Marketing

and

January-June 2012, Vol. 2, No. 1

Table of Contents

Special Issue on Higher Education Marketing

i

Janet Salmons, Capella University and Vision2Lead, Inc., USA Felix Maringe, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa

Research Articles

1

What is the Secret of Successful University Brands? Chris Chapleo, Bournemouth University, UK

Guest Editorial Preface

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14 The Use of Facebook as a Marketing Tool by Private Educational Institutions in Singapore H. K. Leng, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 26 Using Social Network Sites for Higher Education Marketing and Recruitment Natalia Rekhter, Lincoln College, USA 41 Higher Education Marketing: A Study on the Impact of Social Media on Study Selection and University Choice Efthymios Constantinides, University of Twente, The Netherlands Marc C. Zinck Stagno, University of Twente, The Netherlands 59 You Name It: Comparing Holistic and Analytical Methods of Eliciting Preferences in Naming an Online Program Using Ranks as a Concurrent Validity Criterion Michael J. Roszkowski, La Salle University, USA Scott Spreat, Woods Services, Inc., USA

i

Guest Editorial Preface

Special Issue on Higher Education Marketing Janet Salmons, Capella University and Vision2Lead, Inc., USA Felix Maringe, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa

Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) have changed not only the way we communicate, but also the entire context and nature of the exchange. Boundary-crossing options for teaching and learning mean institutions must compete globally for students. Those students are accustomed to a world where decisions of all kinds are based on connections and relationships. They do not simply buy products based on what is seen or felt in a store, but on the perceived relationship with the company and other customers. Instead of trusting advertising messages or even professional ratings, they trust the judgments of other customers—regardless of the fact that they are unseen, unknown strangers. Companies such as Amazon.com have successfully leveraged this potential for company-customer and customer-customer relationships and customer reviews, ratings or lists. Such companies set Internet users’ expectations for highly interactive, relational information and experiences. In this milieu, institutions of higher education must rethink the ways they relate to prospective students as well as current students the institutions aim to engage and retain. Yet there are many unknowns about the extent to which consumer attitudes and social behaviors extend to choices for a life-changing potential of education as compared to a short-lived, often disposable product.

The two IJTEM special issues on Higher Education Marketing present a range of thinking about these new questions. In addition to this issue, which focuses on the use of social media technologies to recruit new students, a second issue will look at a wider range of research on emerging practices for marketing in higher education. This issue begins with a study by Chris Chapleo, “What is the Secret of Successful University Brands?” It explores a broad question about university branding and corporate branding, and asks how the concept of brand “adds value to organizations beyond the usual focus of consumer product marketing.” Brand is undeniably central to the way Facebook and other social media sites have built large memberships. The following three articles look variously at social media in higher education marketing. Natalia Rekhter’s study, “Using Social Network Sites for Higher Education Marketing and Recruitment,” Constantinides and Stagno’s article “Higher Education Marketing: A Study on the Impact of Social Media on Study Selection and University Choice” look not only at different types of social media, but also varied ways and levels of participation and their implications for higher education marketing. In “The Use of Facebook as a Marketing Tool by Private Educational Institutions in Singapore” Ho Keat Leng explored Facebook

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ii in particular, and its potential for engaging participants and inviting them to contribute content to generate “shared cultural meaning” of the brand. Higher education institutions do not stop marketing once students have enrolled. They want to retain students (and build, yes, brand loyalty that may result in loyal and generous alumni!) The final article “You Name It: Comparing Holistic and Analytical Methods of Eliciting Preferences in Naming using Ranks as a Concurrent Validity Criterion” by Roszkowski and Spreat, explores ways to solicit and analyze student ratings and perspectives on programs and faculty.

Nearly every article in this issue includes a caveat along the lines of this point: there is little extant research that offers relevant foundations for understanding the dilemmas at hand. With this given, we hope the studies described here will become, respectively, foundations for further research. Janet Salmons Felix Maringe Guest Editors IJTEM

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International Journal of Technology and Educational Marketing, 2(1), 1-13, January-June 2012 1

What is the Secret of Successful University Brands? Chris Chapleo, Bournemouth University, UK

ABSTRACT This paper examines branding and how the concept adds value to organizations beyond the usual focus of consumer product marketing. In particular, the focus of exploring branding conceptualizations associated with successful higher education brands in a UK context makes a contribution to a little researched but increasingly topical area. The UK focus was chosen for this initial stage with a view to later comparison with other markets such as the United States where branding of universities has a longer track record. The literature was examined and the concept of ‘successful’ brands explored. The research approach involved generating constructs to determine what underpins a successful university brand, and subsequently testing these among a larger sample of UK university ‘customers.’ Findings explore the variables that underpin successful university brands and significant relationships among these variables. Ultimately, the paper offers initial conclusions on what underpins a successful university brand and proposes variables associated with such brands. Keywords:

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Branding, Higher Education Branding, Higher Education Brands, University Branding, University Brands

INTRODUCTION Education has been argued to be a quasi- commercial service industry (Brookes, 2003) and universities are behaving increasingly as corporations in many respects (Veloutsou et al., 2004; Bunzel, 2007). With increased commercialization comes an associated focus on marketing and branding and the adoption of marketing as an ethos by diverse sectors, including education, is no longer under debate (Shepherd, 2005). The challenge for universities, however, is that effective application of marketing to specialist areas such

as education is arguably not well developed (Hankinson, 2004). As part of marketization it is argued that branding is a key organisational competence as universities compete for resources (Louro & Cunha, 2001; Veloutsou et al., 2004; HelmsleyBrown & Oplatka, 2006). Branding, as conceptualized in this research, comprises both the rational and the emotional elements common to many writers (Le Pla & Parker, 2002; Balmer & Greyser, 2003) and the authors accept the view that ‘the brand is a synthesis of all the physical, aesthetic, rational and emotional elements’ (Hart & Murphy, 1998, p. 61). To explore the essence of branding, however, may require researchers to question why

DOI: 10.4018/ijtem.2012010101 Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

2 International Journal of Technology and Educational Marketing, 2(1), 1-13, January-June 2012

some organizations are more successful than others in brand building (Urde, 2003)? The contribution of this research is that it investigates the elements of brand success. Whilst there has been a reasonable amount of work on what constitutes a successful brand in commercial organizations, and a growing body investigating components of university brands, the specific context of successful university brands addresses a gap in the literature at a time when this work is highly topical. It is accepted that success is a highly subjective term but this is explored through the literature and this paper is offered as a basis for further work to isolate the essence of successful branding in organizations such as universities. The specific objectives of the paper were: • • •

To look for commonalities in brand related activity among universities suggested to have successful brands. To identify the brand components/ variables associated with successful UK university brands. To further the debate and inform practice on the issues surrounding branding in contexts other than commercial product marketing.

LITERATURE REVIEW The literature review explores the concept of successful brands, central to this paper, and then goes on to consider the specific branding context of universities, the application of corporate branding to the sector and finally applies the concept of brand success to the HE sector.

SUCCESSFUL BRANDS The concept of success in any aspect of an organisation is subjective, and this is particularly so when applied to concepts as intangible as brands and brand management. Some common definition of brands is a necessary initial step; there is agreement among most writers that a brand encompasses both the rational and the emotional elements (Le Pla & Parker, 2002; Balmer & Greyser, 2003) and conceptualizing a brand as a synthesis of physical, aesthetic, rational and emotional elements (Hart & Murphy, 1998) was considered inclusive and appropriate. Defining brand success, however, may prove even more elusive, as whilst marketing success is well defined as a concept, no definitive source seemingly focuses on brand success (De Chernatony, D’all Olmo Riley, & Harris, 1998). There are attempts at defining successful brands, generally alluding to a name or symbol which is clearly identified with a sustainable competitive advantage (Doyle, 1990). A useful specific definition is ‘an identifiable product, service, person or place, augmented in such a way that the buyer or user perceives relevant unique added values which match their needs most closely’ (De Chernatony & McDonald, 2000, p. 20). Much literature seems to suggest that one of the defining characteristics between successful and failed brands is that successful brands demonstrate a greater degree of congruence between the values firms develop for their brands and the rational and emotional needs of their consumers (De Chernatony et al., 1998).

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These objectives are linked by the common purpose of investigating the factors underpinning successful brands in universities and draw from existing literature on HE (Higher Education) branding in general and brand success in commercial contexts. The assertion that conventional branding techniques are inadequate in this market (Jevons, 2006) further supports the need for this research. It is conceded that HE branding in the USA is generally more accepted and therefore advanced than the UK (R. Sevier, personal communication, May 2004) but the UK focus of this paper is considered appropriate as it is a interesting and rapidly changing HE market, and results may be valuable for subsequent comparison not only with the US, but with other countries where branding in HE is becoming commonplace but is at varying stages of implementation.

Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.


In the interest of pragmatism several definitions, in particular those of Doyle (1990) and De Chernatony et al. (1998) were synthesised and the respondents, when invited to identify successful brands, were asked to consider those that were clear and consistent (in demonstrating a competitive advantage) and congruous with needs of relevant stakeholders. It is conceded that this definition was not drawn wholly from HE (Higher Education) literature but it is argued that it is appropriate and offers a clear sense of what a successful brand in a wider context means.

UNIVERSITY BRANDING A number of factors have driven the UK HE branding agenda in recent years, including tuition fees, league tables, organisations attaining university status and competition between institutions (Stamp, 2004). Branding in higher education has consequently been increasingly embraced by practitioners (Stamp, 2004) but actually implementing techniques of branding in HE may still be the subject of resistance. Despite suggestions that ‘higher education institutions need to be managed more and more as corporate brands’ (Whelan & Wohlfeil, 2006, p. 317), branding has arguably made little mark on the higher education marketing literature until recent times (Hemsley-Brown & Oplatka, 2006; Bennett et al., 2007). Hankinson (2004) suggests that classical branding theory has its roots in product marketing, and therefore application to areas such as education marketing is limited, although work on university business school brands suggests that they are no different from any other brand and the classic principles of branding still apply (Opoku et al., 2006). Some argue that universities are inherently complex and therefore conventional branding approaches are inadequate in this sector (Jevons, 2006). Indeed, Bunzel (2007, p. 153) suggests that the only aspect of HE brand that can actually be influenced by branding activity is peer assess-

ment; whilst consumers are aware of HE brands and focus their attention on better ones, they are ultimately evidenced through rankings and there is ‘little evidence to show that a university branding programme really creates a change in perception or ranking of a university’. Others, however, suggest that universities are complex organizations but that branding can simplify this complexity and promote ‘attraction and loyalty to the organisation’ Bulotaite (2003, p. 451). It seems that the extent to which branding as a concept is fully embraced in UK HE is open to some debate; it may be that ‘much of what is described as branding in higher education would be better labelled as reputation management or even public relations’ (Temple, 2006, p. 18). Ultimately, perhaps the brand of a university emerges as a function of how well the institution performs in meeting client needs, and is therefore the result of being effective as an institution, rather than its basis (Temple, 2006). It may be argued that the idea of brand experience, or ‘moments of articulation’ that shape brand identities are important to branding an institution such as a university (Lowrie, 2007). The degree to which commercial branding concepts should be applied to nonprofit organizations such as universities or whether better understanding of branding may give rise to different conceptualizations of what is meant by successful branding in different contexts is something that seemingly needs clarification. There are emergent theories of branding that may prove applicable to organizations such as universities, such as Cultural Branding (Holt, 2004) but it is argued that these are some way from practical application to the sector and have intrinsic challenges (e.g., developing the ‘brand myth’). It is therefore suggested that the approach in this paper of exploring institutions that already demonstrate successful brands offers an alternative approach (to that of applying existing models) that illustrates particular variables associated with successful university brands.

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THE INSTITUTIONS AS CORPORATE BRANDS Corporate branding is generally accepted to be a broadly encompassing conceptualization of brand, including reputation, brand identity and corporate image (Balmer, 2001; Fombrun & Shanley, 1990). Corporate branding in the higher education sector can be pursued through two paths, it is suggested; firstly though the promotion of internal values, culture and vision (Balmer & Greyser, 2003), or alternatively externally focused on the marketing of the brand (Aaker, 2004). This is a useful distinction but (considering the generally acknowledged broadness of what is meant by a brand) it may be argued that successful branding needs to take account of and embrace both of these approaches, something that the current HE marketing literature has not seemed to fully reflect so far. It may be argued that the overall role of the corporate brand is to create overall credibility and trust for the university’s service offering. Consideration of the corporate brand literature has informed the conceptual framework for this work in terms of the sampling across groups of opinion formers, as corporate brands are intangible and organizations consist of people whose attitudes and beliefs vary greatly (Waerass & Solbakk, 2008).

but that they fail to ‘practice what they preach’. This, it seems, is a paradox; that branding a university has great possibilities that may not be fully exploited, arguably partly due to a lack of a clear conceptualization of what a successful university brand really encompasses, and on occasion a resulting narrow focus on visual identity. In conclusion, it seems that much existing work undertaken in the area of applying branding theory to HE institutions has largely been borrowed from non-education sectors (Hemsley-Brown & Oplatka, 2006) and that there has been little real work to establish how a successful university brand should be conceptualized and managed. The purpose of this paper is to investigate HE institutions that seem to be successful in terms of branding, and ultimately move towards a specific conceptual model of brands applicable to universities that is intended to increase knowledge of branding by exploring what the concept really means in sectors other than commercial product marketing.

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EXPLORING SUCCESSFUL UNIVERSITY BRANDS Bulotaite (2003) suggests that the name of a university should immediately evoke associations, emotions and images, and that the role of university branding is to build, manage and develop these. He argues that university brands actually have the potential to create stronger feelings than most brands and that the key to doing this successfully is to create a unique communicative identity. Universities, however, have plural identities (Lowrie, 2007) that make articulating a simplistic identity challenging. Jevons (2006, p. 467) argues that universities may talk of differentiation through their brands

METHODOLOGY

This research had the overall objective of investigating successful university brands and the approach was to elicit constructs associated with those brands and then quantify these to arrive at an index that suggests the importance of particular elements. This is subsequently referred to as the brand strength index (BSI). Significant relationships between the variables were also explored. Consequently, the key variables associated with a successful university brand were suggested and the methodology therefore incorporated different approaches towards an overall research aim (Wood & Welch, 2010). It should be noted that the constructs were generated specifically for this work, rather than from extant literature, as the aim was to work from a blank canvas. For this, a repertory grid technique was conceived as being appropriate as it essentially seeks a personal construct theory in action (Kelly, 1959; Goffin, 2002).



This was based on the notion that ‘individuals makes sense of their world by construing what they see and experience using words that they naturally use and which makes sense to them’ (Senior & Swailes, 2004, p. 3). The technique was appropriate to investigate the constituent elements of successful brands and examine the associations they hold in interviewee’s minds. Kelly’s ‘Role Construct Repertory Test’ was appropriate for this investigation (Jankowicz, 2004) as it was ‘useful to view personal construct systems as being made up of hierarchically linked sets of bipolar constructs’ (Fransella et al., 2004, p. 3), (for example ‘strong/weak’, or ‘modern/established’), in order to attempt subsequent measurement and differentiation between high and low performing universities. Thus, the perceivers; 30 opinion formers/ customers from ten successful universities were invited to highlight their initial perceptions of each university in an interview. These groups of opinion formers were selected as they represent experts who can draw on their specialist knowledge to define the fundamental characteristics of relevant matters (Proctor, 2000). Whilst the sample is considered by some to be small in size, others such as Fouladi and Shieh (2004) and Duin (1995) postulate that even a small sample can be considered specific, significant, rigorous and robust and is appropriate when the aim is to understand in detail (Christy & Wood, 1999). Semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2008 and each respondent was allowed to generate their own set of constructs (Fransella et al., 2004). The interviews were recorded and transcribed for content analysis (Goodman, 1999; Schilling, 2006) and analysis was undertaken in what Patton (2002) terms the ‘traditional’ manner that involved developing the coding categories to group terms. This was undertaken by writing relevant codes onto the transcripts, then undertaking formal coding in a more systematic manner. This was checked by an independent researcher and simple percentage agreement between the two researchers was calculated at 84%. One hundred and thirty eight terms were generated in the interviews and these terms

formed the basis of the constructs. Once the terms were grouped under sixteen overall constructs, each construct developed was assigned its bipolar alternative as required by repertory theory (Fransella et al., 2004). An example would be where a respondent suggested a successful institution was ‘improving’ (emergent pole), then its opposing implicit pole is ‘declining’ (Stewart & Stewart, 1981). The emergent constructs were then incorporated into a questionnaire, (with seven choices from strongly disagree to strongly agree) essential in the formation of a repertory grid (Kelly, 1959). Beail (1985) suggests that this technique allows interviewees greater freedom when sorting the constructs and does not force them to make discriminations which do not exist. It was ensured that strong agreement with emergent poles always had a high score for numerical consistency. The questionnaire was piloted and a number of adjustments made, including the practical steps of limiting length and rationalization of institutions examined. It was also decided, in the final analysis, to remove non evaluative variables (e.g., old and large) as it was considered that these had absolute answers that could not be easily compared with the evaluative variables (Wood & Welch, 2010). The six UK institutions investigated in depth were Cambridge, London School of Economics, City, Warwick, Oxford Brookes and Middlesex. After piloting, the questionnaire was distributed among the sample of university customers for this stage of the work until a quota of 200 was reached, essentially via a stratified convenience sample (Malhotra & Birks, 2003, p. 361). Whilst it is accepted that there will be a need to investigate other groups of opinion formers at a later date this group was initially targeted as they are the primary customer group for universities. The breakdown of the student sample was UK Undergraduate 127, UK Postgraduate 12, International Undergraduate 15, International Postgradute32, and International Pre Masters 14. These students were from business and humanities backgrounds. Gender of the

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Table 1. Constructs associated with successful university brands Constructs identified for successful UK university brands Strength Progression International Status Reputation Accessibility Location Marketing Spend Focus Distinction Professional Approach Corporateness Polytechnic Image and Attitude

sample was random as it was not investigated as a variable at this stage. Analysis initially involved calculation of simple mean scores for each question (or variable) and these were plotted against the six universities in the final sample. This is explained further in the findings of this paper. Effectively assessing the overall brand strength of a cross section of UK universities enabled an overall index of brand strength to be calculated. A mean of this nature may be simplistic, however, and therefore more insight was arguably gained by considering averages for each variable/ institution and the relationships between the scores for individual variables through a MANOVA calculation (selected as it identifies interaction among dependent variables where there are two or more). A number of personal variables were also established to profile the respondents, with a view to possible testing (as independent variables) for significance against the brand strength index (BSI). These were informed by a number of previous studies including Bennett and Ali-Choudhury (2009) and Veloutsou, Lewis, and Paton (2004).

FINDINGS As stated, 138 terms were generated and similar terms were grouped, allowing generation of the constructs listed in Table 1. Subsequently emergent and implicit poles were established (Table 2). Whilst the primary purpose of generating these constructs was to subsequently test them on a wider sample, closer examination does suggest some potentially interesting observations. It may be that the constructs themselves may seem surprising when compared with existing literature (such as Bennett et al., 2007) but they offer an interesting alternative insight into what is meant by university brands. Space does not allow close examination of each construct but clarification of a few may be helpful. Some, such as international status or marketing spend are self explanatory but others less so. Focus referred to whether the institution was perceived to have, e.g., an Arts, Business or other focus overall, progression referred to the perceived progressive (or otherwise) attitude of the institution, and corporateness was a variable explaining whether interviewees saw the institution as corporate/ business -like.

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Table 2. Elicited constructs and their emergent and implicit poles Emergent

Implicit

Progressive

Backward looking

Strong international reputation

Weak international reputation

Strong UK reputation

Weak UK reputation

Easily approachable

Unapproachable

Prime city location

Poor city location

Distinct from other universities

Not distinct from other universities

Professional approach

Unprofessional approach

Polytechnic university

Always a university

Polytechnic alludes to the perception of an institution as a former polytechnic as opposed to a long standing university and image and attitude refers to the positive perceptions of the institution’s overall attitude. Strength is a generic term that encompasses terms similar to ‘strong’ used in association with the institution’s brand among interviewees. Finally, Professional referred to perceptions that the institution operated in a particularly professional manner in the view of interviewees. Reputation, perhaps unsurprisingly, was a construct that was cited for all institutions. This would suggest that reputation is closely linked to and underpins brand, and may add weight to the view that brand is difficult to manufacture. Reputation is argued by some authors to be synonymous with brand, however (Frost & Cooke, 1999) and the relationship between the two is not a clear one. Reputation may therefore be argued to be a key component of a successful brand, although some writers suggest that brand can be managed separately from reputation to some extent as brand is controlled by the organization whilst reputation is controlled by stakeholders (Frost & Cooke, 1999). The progression construct, heavily cited, also seemed to suggest that currency (or to be up and coming) was of importance. Professionalism was a construct mentioned in association with a few, but not all the sample universities and it seemingly has value, but may not carry the weight of other constructs.

Constructs such as accessibility, focus, corporateness, attitude and marketing spend were not universally cited. Ultimately more work is needed to empirically establish whether results from this relatively small sample are indicative of the value of these various constructs associated with successful university brands, but this was further to the purpose of this initial study. Thereafter non evaluative variables (e.g., old and large) were removed as early analysis suggested that these could be problematic to compare with evaluative variables. This resulted in the variables in Table 2.

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DISCUSSION OF THE ‘BRAND STRENGTH INDEX’ (BSI) The initial analysis undertaken was a simple calculation of the mean scores across all constructs rated and hence a value termed the overall Brand Strength Index (BSI) for each university was calculated (7 being highest and 1 lowest). Whilst this illustrates a general overall ranking of brand strength (Table 3), it is conceded that the BSI, as a mean of scores across constructs, may be a limited indicator of elements of a successful brand. Nevertheless it offers an initial general indication of the relative overall strengths of the respective university brands in this sample, based upon the identified constructs. Perhaps more pertinent than exploration of the mean scores for each institution, however, was examination of whether respondent’s



Table 3. 1 BSI for six successful university brands (7.0 = highest possible score) Cambridge

5.55309

LSE

5.189413

City University of London

4.722003

Warwick

4.719413

Oxford Brookes

4.334223

Middlesex

3.889112

perceptions of each variable (e.g., being professional) differed significantly between the different institutions. Therefore, the average scores for each question (or variable) were plotted against the six

universities in the final sample. Table 4 shows the results of the MANOVAs. It is appreciated that n = 6 (universities) is limiting in terms of sample institutions, but the results are nonetheless of interest in looking

Table 4. Average scores for each variable plotted against the six sample universities City

Cambridge

LSE

Warwick

Middlesex

Oxford Brookes

F

Manova P value

University X is a progressive (forward looking) University

4.61

5.07

5.32

4.63

4.18

4.85

439.9

.000

University X has a strong international reputation

4.70

6.24

5.35

4.61

3.65

4.12

1029.4

.000

University X has a good reputation within the UK

4.59

6.57

5.68

5.54

3.58

4.48

547.4

.000

University X is easily approachable and open

4.39

3.26

4.45

4.33

4.37

4.67

617.4

.000

University X is situated in a prime city location

5.55

4.78

5.84

3.76

3.92

4.44

601.2

.000

University X is quite distinct from other UK universities

4.48

5.84

5.19

4.19

3.63

3.97

780.3

.000

University X has a professional approach

4.86

6.11

5.67

5.04

4.29

4.69

603.4

.000

University X has always been a University (and never a polytechnic/ University College)

4.26

5.45

4.59

4.66

3.42

3.66

741.1

.000

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Table 5. Variable associated with a successful UK university brand Variable

Average for each variable

Highest individual score for each construct/ variable in an individual university

Progressive

4.78

5.07

Strong International Reputation

4.78

6.24

Good UK Reputation

5.07

6.57

Approachable

4.25

4.67

Prime City Location

4.72

5.84

Distinct

4.55

5.84

Professional

5.11

6.11

Always a University

4.34

6.11

for indications of where the essence of a successful university brand lies. The results of the MANOVAs showed significant differences between all six universities on all questions This indicated that our participants perceived significant differences between the named universities in terms of the indicators in question (e.g., progressiveness or professionalism). This data was used to explore the variables associated with a successful UK university brand in Table 5. Initially it was considered important that this should demonstrate the eight key constructs / variables associated with a successful UK university brand, and in addition the average scores for each variable were calculated and the highest individual score for each construct/ variable were shown. This is discussed further in the conclusions.

sider the research in respect of external league tables, which are an increasingly important source of information for many consumers. The Times Good University Guide is considered to be the most influential national league table for the UK, followed by The Guardian University Guide, and The Sunday Times University Guide and also The National Student Survey. On an international scale the THES-QS World University Rankings and the SJTU ARWU were also considered important (HEFCE, 2008). Since the inception of league tables, six UK institutions have always appeared in the top 10 of the three foremost national league tables. These are:

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AN ABSOLUTE MEASURE OF UNIVERSITY SUCCESS? A COMPARISON BETWEEN EXTERNAL LEAGUE TABLES OF UK UNIVERSITIES AND IDENTIFIED SUCCESSFUL BRANDS It may be argued that the presence, and importance, of external league tables creates unusual challenges for branding in higher education. Therefore, it was considered pertinent to con-

• • • • • •

Imperial College London London School of Economics and Political Science University College London University of Cambridge University of Oxford University of Warwick

This is interesting when viewed against the sample of UK institutions investigated for their successful brands in this research. There is a certain amount of commonality, with the exception of Imperial and UCL. HEFCE’s findings (2008) suggested that the majority of



UK HEIs have taken or take strategic decisions that were based upon (or at least informed by) league tables. This brings into question the relationship between reputation and branding as discussed earlier. HEFCE (2008, p. 53) talk of ‘national league tables generally ending up confirming institutional reputation’. HEFCE also suggest that commercial league tables in the UK avoid disrupting the dominant expectations too much – this includes assumptions such as that ‘Oxbridge’ will come near the top and that most pre 1992 universities will be above most post 1992 universities. This illustrates the essence of the difference between a successful brand and a league table position, as this research suggests that an institution that is comparatively lowly placed in the league tables can nevertheless have a successful brand with its key (often niche) target audiences. There certainly seems to be a role for branding over and above a focus on league table positioning alone. HEFCE (2008, p. 54) argue that ‘league tables may be influential, but only part of the complex decision making process and often used to confirm a decision already made’. A strong brand should communicate far more about strengths in key areas than the often narrow league table placing indicator. If used appropriately, branding could build upon league table positioning, whether that be high, middle or low, by emphasising unique selling points. A question for further research would seem to be the extent to which league table position and branding success are synonymous? Clearly further work is needed to answer this question.

more predictable than others but they nevertheless form an interesting conceptual picture of the constituent variables in a successful UK university brand, and begin to suggest elements that would be less applicable to a typical consumer product brand (e.g., progressiveness and accessibility). A number of these constructs, such as accessibility and progressiveness may initially seem somewhat nebulous and difficult to translate to managerial implications, but this appears to support the work of Lowrie (2007) in that they may be evidenced through language and dialogue. When considering of the results of this research in the light of extant literature, the suggestion that HE brands are no different from any other brand (Opoku et al., 2006) may be disputed, as the collection of variables do not wholly apply to a commercial context. The variables offered also demonstrate the potential problems of a narrow conceptualization of what a successful university brand really encompasses (Baker & Balmer, 1997; Brookes, 2003). The set of values in this work reflect the call to communicate internal values, culture and vision (Balmer & Greyser, 2003) whilst focused on the marketing of the brand (Aaker, 2004). When a larger sample of customers was employed to investigate and quantify perceptions of the identified constructs the results suggested that Cambridge and LSE had the strongest brands. Perhaps more surprising was City University’s overall ranking slightly above Warwick. Further investigation suggested that this was due to City having a perceived high score from a prime city location, as well as good mean scores for most other values and it could therefore be argued to be a good example of a successful university brand. This work was driven by the ultimate aim of suggesting the variables suggested as being associated with a successful UK university and these are listed in Table 5. This group of variables, then, summarizes the values seemingly associated with successful institutions, but closer consideration should encourage debate on whether this set of values is really a brand in the same way as a commercial

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CONCLUSION This research had one objective of exploring commonalities in brand related activity among universities identified as having successful brands. Through this brand components associated with successful UK university brands were evident. These included reputation, progressiveness, professionalism, accessibility and corporateness. Some of these were perhaps



product, and therefore whether re-conceptualization is necessary to manage these values. Some of the constructs measured here may seem surprising, but it should be considered that they were derived specifically for this research and therefore offer an interesting new perspective. It may be that a core set of values is desirable, augmented where needed to communicate with various stakeholder groups. This in itself may pose practical problems given limited university marketing resources, but should nevertheless be given consideration, given the view that universities often fail to really differentiate through their brands (Jevons, 2006; Waeraas & Solbakk, 2008). It should also be considered, however, that the HE context is unusual in having a clear set of quality indicators in various league tables, which have a complex and varying relationship with the brands of the individual universities. A simplistic view is that branding should improve league table ranking but other work suggests that this is not necessarily the case (Bunzel, 2007), and clearly this relationship needs further clarification. This work had a final objective of encouraging debate and informing practice on the issues surrounding branding in contexts other than commercial product marketing.

MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS The conceptualization and application of branding to areas other than commercial product marketing is increasingly relevant in terms of practise and now attracts considerable resources. Discussion of managerial implications is therefore important and several points are evident: practitioners and managers should understand the HE context specific nature of the variables associated with a brand, and seek to address these fully. This is challenging given the culture of universities (Waeraas & Solbakk, 2008) but may be addressed through diverse measures such as management education and support and internal marketing programmes. Consideration should be given to the role of proposed specific brand components such as accessibility and progressiveness and the extent to which these are applicable to individual institutions and how they may be effectively communicated. As discussed, language and dialogue are suggested starting points but the whole concept of a linked branding model that incorporates experiential branding is worthy of broader consideration.

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FURTHER RESEARCH It may be argued that the above variables form a good starting point for conceptualising a successful brand in the UK university context. This paper is a fairly early stage of investigation, however, and there is a clear need for further academic investigation. In particular the components of a successful university brand proposed need wider empirical investigation with various relevant audiences to establish whether they are comprehensive and have wider applicability throughout the diverse stakeholder environment of a university. Ultimately a conceptual model of university brands that is empirically sound but also has practical applicability is the desirable outcome.

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Chapleo, C., & Simms, C. (2010). Stakeholder identification and prioritisation in the higher education sector: A case study of the University of Portsmouth. Perspectives . Policy and Practice in Higher Education, 14(1), 12. doi:10.1080/13603100903458034

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Louro, M. J., & Cunha, P. V. (2001). Brand management paradigms. Journal of Marketing Management, 17, 849–875. doi:10.1362/026725701323366845 Lowrie, A. (2007). Branding higher education: Equivalence and difference in developing identity. Journal of Business Research, 60(9), 990–999. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2007.01.024

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Veloutsou, C., Lewis, J. W., & Paton, R. A. (2004). University selection: information requirements and importance. International Journal of Educational Management, 18(3), 160–171. doi:10.1108/09513540410527158 Waeraas, A., & Solbakk, M. (2008). Defining the essence of a university: lessons from higher education branding. Higher Education, 57(4), 449–462. doi:10.1007/s10734-008-9155-z Whelan, S., & Wohlfeil, M. (2006). Communicating brands through engagement with ‘lived’ experiences. Journal of Brand Management, 13, 313–329. doi:10.1057/palgrave.bm.2540274

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Senior, B., & Swailes, S. (2004). The dimensions of management team performance: A repertory grid study. International Journal of Productivity and Performance, 53, 317–333. doi:10.1108/17410400410533908 Shepherd, I. D. H. (2005). From cattle and Coke to Charlie: Meeting the challenge of self marketing and personal branding. Journal of Marketing Management, 21, 589–606. doi:10.1362/0267257054307381

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Chris Chapleo is Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Bournemouth University, UK. His research interests are in marketing and branding in the non-profit sector, particularly education. He has published and presented widely on aspects of non-profit and education branding, and is involved in ongoing consultancy projects in the sector. Prior to academia he held senior marketing roles in the publishing and leisure sectors, as well as higher education, where his interest in the topic began.



The Use of Facebook as a Marketing Tool by Private Educational Institutions in Singapore H. K. Leng, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

ABSTRACT With social network sites growing in popularity, many organisations have started to use this platform to market themselves. However, marketing on social network sites is different from traditional marketing. Its value lies in engaging members of the social network and generating shared cultural meaning of the advertised brand rather than promoting awareness of the brand to a large number of people. This is not apparent to marketers and as such, many organizations are not leveraging on this media tool effectively. This paper examines the use of Facebook as a marketing tool by private educational institutions offering degree programmes in Singapore and investigates the extent that these educational institutions are leveraging on this new marketing communications tool. The findings suggest that marketing on social network sites remains in its infancy. Educational institutions in Singapore have started to use social network sites as a marketing communications tool. However, as the majority of visitors were using social network sites as an extension to existing mediums for seeking information, there is clearly the potential for the educational institutions to move to the next level in leveraging on social network sites to engage its members and generating a shared cultural meaning of their brands.

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Keywords:

Customer Engagement, Educational Institutions, Facebook, Marketing Communications, Social Network Sites

INTRODUCTION Higher educational institutions have traditionally focused their attention on building a robust academic programme to draw students. However, due to growing competition, educational institutions have come to realise that they need

DOI: 10.4018/ijtem.2012010102

to market themselves more aggressively to recruit and retain students (Newman, 2002). Educational institutions have relied on various marketing communication tools to reach out to potential students. These include traditional marketing communication tools like advertisements in the mass media, direct marketing to school leavers, open house day and campus tours. When new technologies and marketing platforms emerge, educational



institutions have also been quick to adopt them as part of their marketing communications (Kittle & Ciba, 2001). In recent years, social network sites have grown exponentially in popularity, especially among young adults. Many organisations, including educational institutions, have seen the growth of social network sites as an opportunity to market themselves on this new platform. Marketing on social network sites is distinctively different from traditional marketing as social network sites are organised around people and their relationships. They allow for members to exchange information with each other and contribute to the collective making of meaning. The real value of marketing on social network sites thus lies in the ability to engage members and generating a shared cultural meaning of the advertised brand. However, many organisations do not realise that social network sites are different and continue to use traditional marketing tactics on social network sites. The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent that private educational institutions in Singapore are using social network sites as a new marketing communications tool and the extent that they are leveraging on this medium to engage with students. The findings from this study will lead to a better understanding of the use of social network sites as a marketing tool among private educational institutions in Singapore.

evaluate the choices available (Petty, Cacioppo, & Schumann, 1983). As such, a prospective student will seek out information extensively and put much consideration in the decision. In becoming more market-oriented, educational institutions will need to know how prospective students seek out information and make decisions. Studies have shown that students have many sources of information to rely on in choosing an educational institution. These can be loosely grouped into personal and non-personal sources of information. Personal sources of information include family members, friends and students and staff members of the target educational institutions. Non-personal sources of information include the prospectus of educational institutions, visits to the educational institutions and the websites of educational institutions (De Jager & Du Plooy, 2010; Johnston, 2010; Simões & Soares, 2010). Despite the varied sources of information available to students, prospective students are still unable to fully evaluate the merits of an institution due to the intangible and non-standardised nature of education (Briggs & Wilson, 2007; Mazzarol, Soutar, & Thein, 2000; Warwick & Mansfield, 2003). As such, any decision made will necessarily involve accepting an amount of perceived risk or the uncertainty faced when the consequences of their decision cannot be anticipated (Schiffman & Kanuk, 2010). To reduce the level of perceived risks in such a decision, prospective students may rely more on word-of-mouth rather than advertising in making their decision (Briggs & Wilson, 2007; Pampaloni, 2010). Word-of-mouth is perceived to be more credible as the motivation for sharing the information lies in wanting to help fellow consumers in making a choice (Kozinets, De Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010). Hence, many prospective students rely on the advice of family, friends and teachers in selecting the schools of their choice (Simões & Soares, 2010). Several studies also found that open house days and campus tours are most influential in the decision-making process for prospective students. In the absence of family members

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LITERATURE REVIEW Selection of Educational Institution Selecting an educational institution by a prospective student is an important decision. It not only involves a significant amount of time and monetary resources but more importantly, the choice of an educational institution directly affects the career choice of the prospective student. In such a purchase situation where there is a high level of personal relevance and important consequences, it becomes important for the consumer to form a reasoned opinion and to devote the cognitive effort required to



or friends who have attended the target educational institutions, such visits allow prospective students the opportunity to experience the characteristics of the educational institution and to seek advice from students and staff of the educational institutions (De Jager & Du Plooy, 2010; Pampaloni, 2010; Simões & Soares, 2010). As such, educational institutions have also been using making use of testimonials from existing students and graduates, staff and employers in their marketing communications (Mazzarol et al., 2000; Pampaloni, 2010; Simões & Soares, 2010). With changes in technology, new sources of information become available for prospective students to tap into. For example, beginning in the late 1990s, there had been an increase in the use of websites by colleges and universities to promote themselves instead of the traditional paper-based brochures or prospectus. Websites offer higher levels of interactivity and support in student recruitment and applications, and are thus seen as more effective tools compared to the traditional tools (Kittle & Ciba, 2001; Simões & Soares, 2010). In the last few years, social network sites have become very popular, especially among young adults. As they offer an even higher level of interactivity than institutional websites and allow prospective students to seek out students and staff from the target educational institutions, it is expected that social network sites will become an effective marketing tool for educational institutions.

(Boyd & Ellison, 2008; Hayes, Ruschman, & Walker, 2009; Peluchette & Karl, 2008). Facebook was started in 2004 with the original intention to support the social network in Harvard University. However, it grew in popularity and soon allowed for membership to the communities outside the university. This popularity is further evidenced by the publication of a best-selling book (Mezrich, 2010) and a successful movie on the story of Facebook (Fincher, 2010). Social network sites are popular because it allows for people to stay in touch with their friends and maintain existing social relations. This is a virtual community of people with common interests who communicate regularly with each other. As such, it allows for members to seek information, friendship and support from each other. As members of social network sites are likely to know each other, there is also a high level of trust within social network sites and correspondingly, the level of information sharing is likely to be high (Ridings & Gefen, 2004; Ridings, Gefen, & Arinze, 2002). Being a member of a social network site is especially attractive for people who are comfortable with internet technology and has a higher need to belong to social groups (Boyd & Ellison, 2008; Gangadharbatla, 2008). As such, it is not surprising that young adults are heavy users of social networking sites as they are more likely to be comfortable with internet technology. Most young adults have at least one social network account, with many of them logging on to their social network site at least once a day (Cha, 2009; Gangadharbatla, 2008; Kelly, Kerr, & Drennan, 2010; Peluchette & Karl, 2008). With the increasing popularity of social network sites, many commercial organisations see social network sites as a new channel for marketing themselves. It was believed that advertising in social networking sites can be effective as advertising messages are sent to specific targets on the basis of disclosed interests and demographics on social network sites (Ridings et al., 2002). In addition, as members of social network sites access their account to

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Social Network Sites in Marketing Boyd and Ellison (2008) define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public profile within a bounded system and articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection. Defined as such, the first social network site was SixDegrees. com launched in 1997, although it was not until Friendster in 2002 and MySpace in 2003 that social network sites became popular. Today, the most popular social network site is Facebook



relieve boredom or to socialise, the audience is expected to be in a relaxed frame of mind and thus more likely to be receptive of advertising messages. As such, many commercial organisations have started investing time and money in creating, purchasing and advertising on social network sites. However, there remains little evidence as to the effectiveness of advertising on social network sites. While there are many studies on social network sites, they have generally focused on social issues. These include studies on the management of identities on social network sites, the maintenance of relationships both online and offline and the maintenance of privacy among users. Comparatively, there is less research on the managerial and marketing aspects of social network sites (Boyd & Ellison, 2008; Cha, 2009; Kelly et al., 2010). The few studies conducted on the effectiveness of advertising on social network sites have suggested that some of the marketing theories established earlier in contexts outside of social network sites are still applicable. Favourable attitudes towards shopping for products is dependent on the positive perceptions of the usefulness, ease of use, security of the shopping services on social networks and the fit between social networks and the items sold (Cha, 2009). However, evidence also suggests that respondents take little interest in advertisements on social networking sites. Similar to contexts external to social network sites, advertisements are avoided because they are not relevant or credible (Kelly et al., 2010). Yet, social network sites are distinctly different from other forms of internet services. Social network sites are organised around people and their relationships, as the motivation in accessing the network sites is to maintain relationships with the existing network of friends. This is different from earlier internet platforms like forum discussions, which are organized around interests or topics. On these platforms, participants are seeking to exchange information and not in maintaining relationships (Boyd & Ellison, 2008; Gangadharbatla, 2008). It thus follows that marketing on social network sites should likewise be different from

traditional marketing. In traditional marketing, marketing messages devised by commercial organisations are driven to consumers. Consumers play no role in the process and are powerless. However, consumers on social networking sites have as much power as marketers. The internet has made it possible for a shift towards a network co-production model where consumers are able to influence each other, exchange information and contribute to the production of meaning. Advertisers can initiate a conversation among consumers but will not be able to control the direction that the conversation will head as consumers have as much power as the advertiser in determining the marketing message and the cultural meaning of the brand (Deighton & Kornfeld, 2009; Kozinets et al., 2010). This can be a concern as there is a negativity bias where more attention is given to negative reviews made online (Sen & Lerman, 2007). Marketers have also wrongly believed that social network sites can be used to promote awareness among a large group of people. As members on social network sites seek to maintain existing relationships and not form connections with strangers, the probability that the message goes beyond the existing network of relationships remains limited (Boyd & Ellison, 2008). Hence, the real value of marketing on social network sites lies in engaging with the members of the social network and generating a discussion and shared cultural meaning of the advertised brand rather than promoting awareness to a large number of people. Unfortunately, many advertisers have continued to use traditional marketing tactics on social network sites. The advertising message continues to be one-directional and the potential to engage consumers via social network sites remains limited (Deighton & Kornfeld, 2009; Kozinets et al., 2010).

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Marketing Educational Services Using Social Network Sites As potential applicants to universities are young adults, it is expected that they are likely to have social network accounts. As such, educational institutions have increasingly used advertise-



ments on social network sites to target potential applicants and recruit students (Hayes et al., 2009; Johnston, 2010). The few early studies on the use of social network sites by educational institutions have shown that it is not more effective than traditional medium. However, it was suggested that the early studies were limited in that they were conducted in a period where social network sites had not reached a point where they were widely used. Hence, the results may not be a true reflection on the effectiveness of the use of social network sites in marketing educational institutions. There is still an expectation that advertising on social network sites will become effective as the popularity of social network sites increases. Interestingly, it was also found that educational institutions tend to overestimate the importance of social media as a marketing tool. As such, it remains to be established if the enthusiasm for advertising on social network sites remains an overestimation of its effectiveness as an advertising medium or simply a channel awaiting maturity (Johnston, 2010). Social network sites are more effective in engaging students who have already expressed an interest in the educational institution rather than to create interest among students. In addition, it is able to access many students and staff of the educational institution and allows for information gathering in a short period of time (Hayes et al., 2009). However, engaging in marketing on social network sites is different. While the management of an university is able to have control over the communication to students in traditional marketing platforms, in social networks, the institution does not have control over the content any more as most of the content is created and shared by external publics (Hayes et al., 2009). Setting up a user group or creating a social network site allows the institution to join the students where they are and creates the opportunity to provide information, generate positive messages and engage students both with the institution and among themselves. The challenge is to remain authentic and reflect the brand image of the university, and retain a high

degree of human interaction and personalisation to inspire continuing conversation and the building of an online community (Hayes et al., 2009). The above review suggests that there is an increasing focus by educational institutions on marketing themselves to prospective students. In order to recruit and retain students, educational institutions, especially private educational institutions as they depend largely on course fees for financing their operations, need to understand the decision-making process of prospective students. While prospective students have varied sources of information, the intangible nature of education creates a situation in which sources of information resulting from direct experience with the educational institutions are more influential. These include campus tours or open house days, and testimonials from students and staff of educational institutions. With the growing popularity of social network sites, this has become another source of information for prospective students. However, current research suggests that the effectiveness of social network sites in marketing educational institutions remains limited. The objective of this research is to determine the extent that private educational institutions in Singapore use social network sites to market themselves and the extent that their marketing leverages on the new media to engage with prospective students.

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METHODOLOGY With effect from 21 December 2009, private educational institutions in Singapore were required to register with the Council for Private Education under a new legislation (Ministry of Education, 2011). Besides regulating the private education sector, the Council also oversees the development in the local private education industry. To that end, the Council administers the EduTrust certification scheme which is a voluntary scheme to assess private educational institutions in key areas of management and provision of educational services. At the high-



Table 1. List of private educational institutions selected Private Educational Institution

Award

Date of First Facebook Entry

East Asia Institute of Management

EduTrust

14 Aug 2009

MDIS College

EduTrust

28 Mar 2010

PSB Academy

EduTrust

11 Jan 2010

Stansfield College*

EduTrust

21 Sep 2010

TMC Academy

EduTrust

2 Sep 2008/11 May 2010

Auston Institute of Management*

EduTrust Provisional

3 Nov 2010

Kaplan Singapore


17 Jun2010

Nanyang Institute of Management*


7 Apr 2010/30 Nov 2010

SMa School of Management


21 May 2009

Stamford Raffles College


18 Sep 2009

* Not included in analysis

est level, the EduTrust Star award is given to a private educational institution for having excelled in all key areas of management and the provision of quality education services. This is followed by the EduTrust and EduTrust Provisonal award. At the beginning of 2011, there is no educational institution that was awarded the EduTrust Star. However, there are 17 and 44 institutions that are awarded the EduTrust and EduTrust Provisional respectively. Initially, five institutions were selected from each list of private educational institutions obtaining the EduTrust and EduTrust Provisional awards. The criteria were that the educational institute should offer degree programmes and has a Facebook account. The list of selected institutions is shown in Table 1. For this study, entries for a period of four months from July to October 2010 were used for analysis. Three of the institutes were not included in the analysis. Both Stansfield College and Auston Institute of Management were not included in the analysis as their first entry in Facebook was after the commencement date for data collection. While Nanyang Institute of Management started its first Facebook account in April 2010, there were no entries during the period of July to October 2010. TMC Academy started its first Facebook account in September 2008 and launched a

second account in May 2010. The intention was to move users to the second account. For the purpose of this study, entries in both accounts were tabulated for analysis. It is interesting to note that Nanyang Institute of Management also started a second Facebook account in November 2010. However, as this was not within the analysis period, there was no material impact on the analysis.

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FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS Each entry is treated as one occurrence. When there are comments to an entry, these are not counted as these comments are usually small in number and unrelated to the purpose of the study. Table 2 shows the total number of entries and the mean number of entries per day during the data collection period for each of the private educational institutions. The total number of Facebook entries in the sample was 506 entries. The majority of the Facebook accounts of private educational institutions had less than a hundred entries in the four month period. This worked out to be less than one entry per day. Coupled with data from Table 1 which showed that most institutions only started a Facebook account in 2010, it can be surmised that the use of social network sites



Table 2. Level of activity on private educational institutions Facebook account Private Educational Institutions

No. of Entries

Mean Entries per Day


10

0.08

Kaplan Singapore

108

0.88

MDIS College

291

2.37

PSB Academy

40

0.33


5

0.04


25

0.20

TMC Academy

27

0.22

Total

506

as a promotional tool is still new among private educational institutions. For comparison purposes, Ridings et al. (2002) proposed that bulletin boards should have at least 10 postings per day to ensure that the bulletin board represented a large group of people who are actively communicating with one another. While social network sites are different from bulletin boards, the low number of less than 1 entry per day does suggests that the virtual community is small. Table 3 examines the entries that originated from the private educational institution. Besides examining the number and proportion of entries originating from the institution, it also categorises the entries into whether it is in the form of advertisements or engagement.

Advertisements entries are defined as entries that encourage visitors to purchase education programmes. They follow the traditional mode of relying on one-directional transfer of information. Engagement entries are defined as entries that follow an interactive model of marketing and include attempts to engage with visitors. 144 entries, or 28% of the total number of entries, were from the educational institution. Only East Asia Institute of Management and Stamford Raffles College had contributed more than 50% of the total entries in their Facebook account. The majority of the institutions had a proportion of contributions by institutions from 20% to 33% of the entries. This suggests that entries on social network sites of private

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Table 3. Analysis of institutional activity Private Educational Institutions

No. of Institutional Entries (% of Total Entries)

No. of Advertisements (% of Institutional Entries)

No. of Engagement Entries (% of Institutional Entries)


10 (100%)

0 (0%)

10 (100%)

Kaplan Singapore

32 (30%)

19 (59%)

13 (41%)

MDIS College

59 (20%)

4 (7%)

55 (93%)

PSB Academy

13 (33%)

3 (23%)

10 (77%)


0 (0%)

0 (0%)

0 (0%)


21 (84%)

1 (5%)

20 (95%)

TMC Academy

9 (33%)

0 (0%)

9 (100%)

Total

144 (28%)

27 (19%)

117 (81%)



Table 4. Analysis of non-institution participants Private Educational Institutions

No. of Non-Institution Entries

No. of Non-Institution Participants

Mean Entries per NonInstitution Participants


0

0

0.00

Kaplan Singapore

76

61

1.25

MDIS College

232

167

1.39

PSB Academy

27

26

1.04


5

5

1.00


4

3

1.33

TMC Academy

18

18

1.00

Total

362

280

1.29

educational institutions in Singapore are mainly driven by visitors or students. On further analysis, it was found that the majority of the entries made by the educational institutions were engagement entries. 117 or 81% of the entries were considered engagement entries. These included entries that provided information on activities conducted by the educational institution like job fairs, guest lectures and workshops, pictures and videos of events organised by the institution, invitations to express opinions or viewpoints on issues, invitations to participate in contests and activities, and congratulatory messages to graduating students. While most educational institutions leveraged on the opportunity to engage students using social network sites, one of the institution continued to use traditional one-directional advertisement on Facebook. Table 4 examines the entries by noninstitution participants. There are a total of 362 non-institution entries and 280 unique non-institution participants across the Facebook accounts of the educational institutions in the four month data collection period. This worked out to an average of 1.29 entries for each noninstitution participant. As noted above, this does not include comments to entries. The entries by non-institution participants are further categorised into Enquiries on Courses, General Enquiries, Compliments or Complaints, Engagement or Advertisements.

Enquiries on courses include enquiries on commencement dates of courses, the fees payable and admission requirements for the courses. General enquiries are defined as non-course specific queries including the impact of new legislation on their programmes, issues related to accommodation and financial assistance, institution rules and policies and student activities. Engagement entries, similar to the definition adopted by the analysis for organizational entries, are entries that seek to establish a relationship with other participants. These include entries by people who are seeking out other people who share similar interest, from the same course or the same country. They also include entries by people looking for roommates, encouraging others for exams or other events, seeking out fellow attendees at events, and requests for information on courses or other assistance. For entries with the sole purpose of soliciting a transaction, they are categorized as Advertisements. These include entries posted by commercial organisations advertising various products and services e.g., lodgings, and other students used textbooks and other products for sale. Table 5 shows the number of entries and their proportion in each category. Table 5 shows that other than Kaplan Singapore and MDIS College, the other educational institutions have less than 30 entries by non-institution participant. As such, it may not be valid to generalise across the educa-

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Table 5. Analysis of non-institution initiated activity Private Educational Institutions

Enquires on Courses

General Enquiries

Compliments/ Complaints

Engagement

Advertisements


0 (0%)

0 (0%)

0 (0%)

0 (0%)

0 (0%)

Kaplan Singapore

43 (51%)

14 (17%)

14 (17%)

11 (13%)

2 (2%)

MDIS College

96 (41%)

47 (20%)

10 (4%)

51 (22%)

31 (13%)

PSB Academy

2 (7%)

1 (4%)

0 (0%)

10 (37%)

14 (52%)


0 (0%)

0 (0%)

0 (0%)

1 (20%)

4 (80%)


0 (0%)

0 (0%)

0 (0%)

4 (100%)

0 (0%)

TMC Academy

2 (11%)

4 (22%)

1 (6%)

8 (44%)

3 (17%)

Total Entries

143 (38%)

66 (18%)

25 (7%)

85 (23%)

54 (14%)

tional institutions. Still, it seems fairly consistent that a small proportion of entries uses the social network site to engage with other participants. By examining only the entries from Kaplan Singapore and MDIS College, it seems that the majority of the entries are enquiries, with a larger number on course-specific enquiries. This suggests that visitors to the social network site of private educational institutions regard the site as another platform to gather information or seek answers to queries. This is supported by the earlier analysis which showed that the number of entries per non-institution participant was low at an average of 1.29 entries. Once an enquiry was answered, there was little need for the participant to visit the social network site and post any other entry. Entries found in the Facebook accounts suggest that visitors believe that social network sites are more efficient than other platforms in obtaining information or getting their queries answered. Enquires on Facebook were expected to receive more immediate attention than email or phone calls.

“PLS PICK UP MY CALL!!! i have been calling since this afternoon till now...” - ASteve Kaka An analysis of the average time to respond to enquiries found that it was between 1 to 2 days across the institutions. Moreover, some of the responses simply re-directed the enquiry to the correct contact person. Hence, emails or phone calls were still the means to answer queries. It was also found in the analysis that 21 or 10% of the enquiries were not given a response by the educational institute. As such, social networks sites as a more effective and efficient platform to answer enquiries remains questionable. Responsiveness engenders trust among members of a virtual community. In turn, trust among members increases the willingness to share information (Ridings et al., 2002). When the level of responsiveness is low on social network sites, it may lead to lower trust and hence and an even lower level of participation from members. As a proxy to establish the type of entries which attracts the most attention from visitors to the site, the “like” votes garnered for the entries were examined. It is found that there were 146 or 29% of the entries garnering “likes” votes. The total number of votes is 469 votes

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“yuhoo~~ i found that the email contact isn’t that efficient, therefore i’m turning to FB!” Michelle Lu



with the highest number of votes for any entry at 21 votes. Entries that had a higher number of votes were mostly from entries made by the institution related to graduation and activities organized by the institution. These entries are usually accompanied by photographs or videos. This suggests that visitors may be attracted to entries that share the happenings in the institution especially when these entries are accompanied by photographs and videos. In comparison, most non-institutional entries did not have a high number of votes. This was to be expected as the majority of the entries were enquiries and did not attract the attention of other participants. The highest number of votes obtained by a non-institutional entry was 14 votes. This entry was made by a student who raised an issue related to the graduation ceremony. This suggests that visitors to the social network site do read the entries and in matters where it concerns them, will actively engage in the issue. As such, although complaints and compliments do not feature as prominently as other categories of entries, when they do appear, it is likely that visitors of the social network site read the entries. Hence, it is important that educational institutes monitor the complaints and compliments on their social network sites when they happen. An analysis of the small number of complaints in this study, however, suggests that this is something that may have been overlooked by organisations. The average response time to complaints is from 1 day to 4 days. This is slightly longer than the average response time to enquiries.

social network accounts receiving less than an entry a day on average. As such, without a large number of visitors and entries, it will be difficult for the educational institute to build a community and leverage on social network sites ability to create shared meaning for the brand. The findings suggest that educational institutes have realised that social network sites are different from traditional marketing platforms. They have generally refrained from dominating the conversation on social network sites and their communication have focused on engaging visitors through soliciting participation in various activities and contests. On analysing the entries by non-institutional participants, it was clear that while some have used the social network site to seek out new friends and transactional opportunities, the majority of the visitors were seeking information through the social network site. In that sense, the social network site was merely another platform for the student to obtain information from the educational institute. From the analysis of the “like” votes, it was also suggested that entries providing information to students on the various activities in the institution was likely to engage students. In addition, it suggests that while complaints on social network sites remain small in number, they are read by visitors and can potentially have a negative impact on the branding of the institution if not handled properly. This study had examined the use of social network sites as a marketing tool by private educational institutes in Singapore. It has also examined the extent of the effectiveness of such a marketing medium. However, like earlier studies, the limitation of this study lies in the relatively young stage of the social network site as a marketing medium. As such, the small number of entries from most of the educational institutes in this sample makes the drawing of any definitive conclusions difficult and problematic. Further study with a longer time frame for data collection may yield more definitive results.

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CONCLUSION Private educational institutes in Singapore have embarked on marketing on social network sites. However, it still seems to be in its infancy stage as the majority of the institutions have only started in 2010. More importantly, the number of entries on these sites remains small with most



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Using Social Network Sites for Higher Education Marketing and Recruitment Natalia Rekhter, Lincoln College, USA

ABSTRACT In this paper, the author examines how the rapid penetration of Social Network Sites (SNSs) into everyday life affects higher education marketing. Among unique features offered by SNSs are unprecedented trackability of students’ interests, immediacy in responses, targeted personalization of marketing efforts, and low institutional financial obligations. Growth in Internet Penetration Rates and strong international SNSs membership suggests further globalization of marketing strategies and inclusion of lower income countries into targeted markets. Concerns associated with the use of SNSs include dearth of fluency in the sites’ content and operation among admission personnel, lack in users’ privacy, and absence of control over the content. The skyrocketing evolution of SNSs surpasses the corresponding research as do applications of SNSs for higher education marketing. As the result, this qualitative study had to draw information from the variety of secondary sources including blogs, web reports, group discussions, comments, forums, videos, etc.

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Keywords:

Higher Education, International Students, Internet Penetration Rate, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networks, Recruitment

INTRODUCTION During the first decade of the 21 century social media or social networking -the terms are often used interchangeably- which is, in crude summary, a “socializing and networking online through words, pictures, and videos” (Reuben, 2008, p. 1) or a “mass democratization of information” (Bennett, 2011, slide 13) became an integral part of many people’s daily routine. Nielsen Online, an analytics firm that tracks social network activities, estimates the reach of social media to be over 700 million active DOI: 10.4018/ijtem.2012010103

users from all over the world with 212,001,960 users being between ages of 16 and 25 (Bennett, 2011). Availability of hyper-connections and constant communications have been “fast and furiously” changing the way all population groups, but particularly teenagers and young adults are acquiring, processing, analyzing, and reacting on information. “The 16-24 year olds of today are constantly connected-plugged into digital music devices, cell phones, the Internet, instant messengers and social networks, perhaps all in the same device” (Barnes & Mattson, 2010, p. 1). Colleges and universities are quickly recognizing the growing power of social networks



and seem to change their marketing strategies to response to the needs of their audience. The above observation determines the goal of this paper which is to investigate the role of technology in the form of Social Networks or Social Media as part the new trends in marketing higher education domestically and internationally. First, I’ll explore definition, historic development, and the use of Social Networks and Social Media for marketing of higher education. Second, I’ll examine how the use of Social Network Sites is being influenced by the different world regions’ and countries’ Internet Penetration Rates and these countries’ Gross Domestic Products. Third, I’ll investigate concerns and barriers associated with the use Social Networks and Social Media. Finally, the evaluation of how these complex variables can be used, and are being used, to support the access of international students to the HIEs in the U.S. will take placed.

USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS

these professionals were familiar with specific forms of social networking, such as videoblogging, blogging, podcasting, message boards, and Wiki. Additionally, 85% of respondents of the survey administered in 2008 admitted using at least one form of social media, a 24% increase compare to the year 2007. Barnes and Mattson (2010) insisted that “the adoption of social media by admission departments is being driven by familiarity and their recognition of the increasingly important role of social media in today’s world. In July 2008, Rachel Reuben (2008) sent surveys to higher education professionals who subscribed to the uweb, HighEdWeb and SUNY CUADnet listservs regarding “their university’s use of social media” (p. 4). Once researchers removed duplicate answers, they found that “there were 148 unique schools responding to the survey” (p. 4). Of those responded, 53.79% reported having a Facebook page and 21.9% a MySpace page, “just over half have an official presence on YouTube and nearly 60% have some forms of blogs on their sites” (p. 5). Most of the respondents reported that they use social media for marketing, “for communicating with current students, to reach out to alumni, and for recruitment” (p. 6). National Association of International Educators (NAFSA) during its recent collegiate conversation “Using Social Media for International Recruitment” that was conducted “live” on May 19, 2011, identified that 76% of this web event participants “use one or more social media platforms to reach international students” (NAFSA, 2011, p. 1) and 56% of participants confirmed that their use of social media platform is “part of a larger strategic plan for international student outreach” (NAFSA, 2011, p. 4).

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Expansion of Social Networks into Higher Education

In the years 2007 and 2008 there were two nationwide comprehensive studies conducted analyzing responses of representatives from 453 and 536 admission offices respectively from all the four-year accredited HEIs in the United States regarding this professionals’ use of social networks for recruitment of domestic and international students (Barnes & Mattson, 2010). The first study revealed that HEIs are surpassing Fortune 500 companies as well as Inc.500 companies in “their use of social media to communicate with their customers (i.e., students)” (Barnes & Mattson, 2010, p. 2). This observation seemed logical taking into account the audience HEIs serve. The study taken in 2008 confirmed this finding and also emphasized growing familiarity of admission officers with social networking: 63% of admission officers were very familiar with social media in 2008, 8% increase compare to 55% a year before. Also, from 26% to 47% of

Definition There is a seeming abundance of opinions connected with defining the phenomena called social network or social media; a simple Google search yielded 17,000,000 results within .19 seconds. There are descriptions provided by Wikipedia, different dictionaries, and self-



proclaimed subject’s gurus; there are publications debating the nature of these definitions, discussions about differences and similarities between social media and social networking, studies of major components of social media, views presented by members as well as users and creators of different social groups, and plethora of other topics and themes. While this public discourse could have become a separate study, for the purpose of this work I would adhere to definition created by scientists with the established reputations in the field. Cheryl Coyle and Heather Vaughn (2008) from Bell Labs Human Factor group describe social network as “a configuration of people connected to one another through interpersonal means such as friendship, common interests, or ideas” (p. 13). Their description is clear, but it doesn’t sound contemporary: people had always been using different forms of social networking. The appearance of computers and Internet, although, allowed individuals to make connections with groups they, otherwise, would have no or very limited opportunity to ever connect. In light of that observation, definition, or rather an explanation, created by Danah Boyd, from University of California-Berkeley, and Nicole Ellison, from Michigan State University (2007), sounds more encompassing. They use the term Social Network Sites (SNSs) which they define as

networking represents one aspect of social media or social media represents one aspect of social networking (Falls, 2008; Cavazza, 2008). Second, it implies the use of visible profiles, reveals public display of connections, ability for interactions, and capacity to target specific ethnic, religious, professional, sexually orientated, political, age-related, linguistic, or other identity-driven groups (Boyd & Ellison, 2008)—all the features that are being associated with the social network sites.

History of SNSs and Higher Education Institutions The history of SNSs starts in 1997 when the SixDegrees.com was launched. It had majority of features that characterized SNS today: allowed users to create profiles, list their friends, and surf the friends lists. However, in 2000 the server closed, largely due to the limitations of the Internet geographic penetration and rather narrow scope of allowed activities (Boyd & Ellison, 2008). The rise of niche SNSs started in 2003 with the launch of MySpace that was largely favored by teenagers, mostly because MySpace targeted music bands, promoted popular clubs, and had a policy that allowed minors to join. Eventually it attracted three distinct populations: musician/artists, teenagers, and the recent post college crowd (Boyd, & Ellison, 2008). Many of these users, primarily older siblings of current Facebook users, are still loyal to MySpace, despite growing Facebook popularity, which allows MySpace to maintain its status as one of the few SNS used by HEIs. Today, MySpace has 185 million registered users ranging in age from 14 to 34 years old. It averages from 39 to 45 billion visits per month (ScottElkin, 2011). Other SNSs that are most popular among HEIs and can be seen almost on every college Website include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs. Facebook began in 2004 as Harvard exclusive SNS. Later it expanded into other schools, included high school students, and, eventually, everyone, but managed to maintain an exciting exclusivity- open sign up doesn’t

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“Web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-private profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.” (p. 211) The authors also warn against using the word “networking”, because networking “is not the primary practice on many of them (SNSs), nor is it what differentiates them from other forms of computer-mediated communication” (p. 211). The above attempt seems to be the most focused and inclusive. First, it addresses the debate about whether or not social



provide an easy access to users in closed networks. Facebook creates an opportunity for building “Applications”, which allows users to personalize their profiles, create schools profiles, share stories and compare preferences. In January of 2008 there were 420 HEIs related Facebook pages that had a college or a university in their name. Seventy three percent of these pages were general marketing pages for the entire school and “14% were connected to sub-groups within the school community” (Anonymous, 2008, p. 1), such as groups of perspective students, specific university programs, groups connecting students by their ethnicity or country of origin, and similar. People who view HEIs pages on Facebook can become their “fans” and this “creates a viral marketing effect” (Reuben, 2008, p. 3), when friends inspired by their friends join this specific institution. “Facebook also offers “organizations the ability to communicate with fans through direct and targeted messages (such as fans in a specific network or age group), and view “insights,” which includes details statistics on the usage of the organization’s page” (Reuben, 2008, p. 3). According to Facebook statistics, as of 2011, Facebook had approximately 500 million active users of which 50% log on to Facebook daily, average user had 130 friends, 70% of users lived outside of US, and more than 250 million were accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. People were spending 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook interacting with pages, groups, events and community groups (Facebook, 2011). On average, over 64% of active Facebook users across the world are between 16 and 25 years old (Bennett, 2011). YouTube—SNS for watching and sharing original videos—was registered in 2005. HEIs have been using promotional videos as part of their marketing strategies starting 20 some years ago with invention of VHSs. YouTube eliminated the cost of creating video cassettes or burning CDs/DVDs, the cost of postage and tremendously widened the audience of potential students. Today YouTube exceeds two billion views a day, Google’s automatic speech recognition technology can translate YouTube videos

into 51 world languages, 70% of YouTube viewers live outside of US, the YouTube player is embedded across over 10 millions websites (Website Monitoring Blog, 2010). Blogs, another form of SNSs, work like on-line dairies or journals. Most popular use of blogs for marketing purposes by HEIs is to have “currently enrolled students blog about their lives on campus… One quarter of all college admissions officers use blogs by students or campus personnel” (Reuben, 2008, p. 4). Twitter is a combination of an instant messaging and blogging that allows users sharing short (140-characters) updates related to their lives. Users can follow their friends, send friends direct messages, reply publically to their updates, and post questions and comments (Reuben, 2008; YouTube, 2011). The total number of Twitter accounts per one U.S. college range from 24 (University of Florida) to one (University of Denver), the average number being 8.4. Over 70% of the top 100 colleges have at least 10 twitter accounts, 7% have 15 accounts. Harvard University has the largest number of Twitter followers—18,955 people—while the average number of followers is 1000. College of William and Mary is in the lead of account tracking, tracking 6,056 accounts. Since the purpose of Twitter is obviously to twit, it’s important to mention it’s most prolific Twitter—George Washington University—at almost 58 tweets per day.

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PERCEIVED EFFECTIVENESS OF SNSS FOR STUDENT RECRUITMENT SNSs and Return on Investment (ROI) Cheryl Darrup-Boychuck, owner and chief international education officer for USjournal, made an attempt to measure ROI of different approaches to international student recruitment, including the use of SNSs. In particular, she compared “inbound marketing”, in which she includes marketing through SNSs, and traditional or “outbound marketing”. She asserted that



traditional marketing, which includes attending college fairs, development and dissemination of paperless and paper promotional materials, and similar efforts, is less effective because it is aiming at too wide of an audience and because of different obstructions, such as spam filters that block mass emails and “tools like RSS that makes print and display advertising less effective” (Darrup-Boychuck, 2009, slide 59). In contrary, SNSs have no obstructions and are more focused on specific groups, which, in her estimates, leads to 61% lower cost per student lead (Darrup-Boychuck, 2009). Besides, with inbound marketing there is no cost differentiation between targeting domestic and international students, while costs of traditional forms of recruitment differ substantially. For instance, using data presented by Baxton and Foley (2009) at the AACRAO’s Conference, Darrup-Boychuck demonstrates that the approximate cost of recruiting one in-state student is $200, one out-of-state student is $500, and one international student is $1,000, without including staff salaries. Meanwhile, the cost of online promoting, using “pay-per-click” or mobile marketing, is $119.50 per any enrolled students regardless of the students’ countries of origin. The cost of marketing by using SNSs like Facebook is nothing (Darrup-Boychuck, 2009). Additionally, by using SNSs universities can “go green” and save thousands of dollars in recurrent cost of printing and mailing educational and promotional materials (Hayes, Ruschman, & Walker, 2009). These are encouraging numbers, but, as of today, this type of recruitment could be viewed upon more as complements than a substitute of traditional methods and strategies. Indeed, while “wired generation” are the major target of recruitment efforts, the decision making power is still largely belongs to parents; and they are consumers of the variety of other, more traditional-“outbound”-, forms of recruitment and enrollment.

SNSs and Monitoring of Students Activities SNSs have a great amount of “trackability”, which allows admission officers to quickly modify their marketing efforts based on the almost immediate feedback from their targeted audience, which is technologically savvy, demanding and eager to share its opinion. For example, Golder, Wilkinson, and Huberman (2007) reported that they were able to analyze 362 million messages of four million Facebook users for insights into messaging information and “friending” activity- an immeasurably useful input for understanding and attracting potential students. Also, “Spertus, Sahami, and Buyukkokten (2005) identified topology of users through their membership in certain communities; they suggested that sites can use this to recommend additional communities of interest to users” (Boyd & Ellison, 2008, p. 221). This possibility can increase number of followers and fuel general interest to the specific university. Therefore, “trackability” can result in targeted recommendations which can create an effect of an “early intervention.” The idea of “early interventions” is fueled by the Mazzarol and Soutar (2002) assertions that “the decision process through which the internationals student moves when selecting a final study destination appears to involve at least three distinct stages. In stage one the student must decide to study internationally… Once the decision to study abroad has been made, the next decision is the selection of a host country” (p. 85). The “trackability” of the SNSs can help identifying “stage one” students, those who had already made a decision to study internationally. The enrollment officers then can help prospect-students in selecting country of interest by channeling them to specific HEIs through the “communities of interests” or by approaching these students directly. Eventually, admission

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officers’ efforts can become part of the “pull” factors influencing students’ decision. “Trackability” also allows for metrics collection. For example, Xavier University’s social network site “Road to Xavier” helped in collecting metrics of freshmen matriculation behavior, which resulted in identifying statistically significant relationships between those who logged into “Road to Xavier” and the likelihood of them attending the institution. The number of logins positively correlated with the enrollment into the university; the fouryear longitudinal study also demonstrated the constant increase in number of logins per future admit and those who actually enrolled into the university (Hayes, Ruschman, & Walker, 2009). “These relationships allow the university to focus their resources on students who demonstrate the greatest propensity to attend. The university also discovers that if the students do not initially log on to the site within the two or three weeks of invitation, they are also less likely to enroll.” (Hayes, Ruschman, & Walker, 2009, p. 120)

said and viewed allows HEIs’ admission to provide strategic and quick reaction to issues, challenges, and opportunities.

SNSs’ Timeliness and Marketing Personalization The almost unlimited ability of Social Network Sites to track users’activities and interests makes enrollment efforts more focused. First of all, it engages potential students and keeps them involved. For instance, if potential student’s profile indicates that she lives in India, interested in ice-skating and French movies, and wants to attend university on Midwest, Facebook gives her an option to be instantly connected with dozens or hundreds others like her. If one of these friends directs her to the university where he or she studies, it might make this university more attractive; after all these two share interests and culture. Meanwhile, according to the Collegerecruiting.com (2009) website “over half of all colleges currently run student blogs… Pick a couple of enthusiastic, innovative students and ask them to write about their life at college… You’ll be amazed by the impact they have” (p. 2) and by the strong “pull” effect of these efforts. Admission offices engage current international students in these types of SNSs activities. These students create their own blogs and tailor their posts to the interests of student-prospects from their countries. Additionally, they can create groups on their regional SNSs, such as, for example, Orkut for South America, or Vkontakte in Russia, making their posts even more targeted and specific. High school juniors and seniors could learn from someone who had recently been experiencing the task of choosing a college. Alumni, in addition to their role of potential donors, can become college ambassadors for the future students. The effect of personalization associated with the SNSs can also assist international students in selection of a host country, which is “influenced by the overall availability of information about the potential destination country and the ease with which students could obtain the information...and the level of referrals or

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Twitter offers a tracking tool called TweetStats.com (2011) which gives a powerful opportunity for obtaining number of not just tweets, but topical tweets per year, a month, or even per day, including those related to recruitment issues. For instance, the TweetStats.com can identify the months when admission questions are in their peak, and the admission officers can allocate more time to Twitter pages, during that time. There are also options of seeing a percentage of replies per specific tweet, and the number of topical tweet followers (TweetStats, 2011). This information also makes enrollment efforts more targeted and specific. Tracking tools like Google and Yahoo Alert permit universities to follow students’ activities. Among other things, these tools offer data regarding academic units reviewed by potential students, students’ common areas of concerns, geographic locations, hobbies, interests, and even parental involvement (google. com/alert). Instant awareness of what is being



personal recommendations that the study destination receives from parents, relatives, friends and other “gatekeepers” (Mazzarol & Sauter, 2002, p. 85). Social network “friends” can be the sources of these referrals and recommendations, using posts and conversations to answer prospects questions, to describe processes, and to make connections, overall making personified efforts. Critical timeliness of SNSs allows for posting up-to-the minutes updates, various advices, as well as specific departmental and individual students’ stories. It can provide immediate responses to questions and concerns, offer encouragement, and celebrate successes. In general, SNSs is a connection tool, similar to the live face-to face conversation. This unique timeliness of SNSs is reflected even in some of the SNSs names. For example, the Russian most popular SNS is called Vkontakte, which literally means “staying in contact.”

PREVALENCE OF SNSS IN OTHER REGIONS AND COUNTRIES

Internet World Stats (IWS) records up-todate internet usage, population statistics, and internet market research data for 233 countries and world regions (Internet World Stats, 2011)1. According to IWS (2011), IPR per region, based on the population statistics, is the highest in North America with 78.3% penetration, followed by Oceania/Australia (60.1%), Europe (58.3%), Latin America (36.2%), Middle East (31.7%), Asia (23.8%), and Africa (11.4%). Although IPR in Asia is inferior to North America or Europe, the number of actual Internet users there is 922.3 million or 44% of all world users. Europe represents 476.2 million Internet users or 22.7% of the world users, North America is at 272.1 million or 13% of the world users, and Latin America is at 215.9 million or 10.3% of the world users, all other regions collectively represent 10% of the world Internet users. The data suggests that the regions with the higher IPR are more likely to have higher usage of SNSs. Indeed, 56% of Internet users in North America are also Facebook users, followed by 54.4% of Internet users in Oceania/ Australia, but then we have Caribbean with the 39% of Internet also being Facebook users, Latin America (35%), Europe comes fifth with 34.1% of Internet users being Facebook users, followed by Middle East (18.5%), Africa (15.9%), and Asia (11.3%)2. However, in term of the number of people, Europe has the highest number of Facebook users, which is 162.1 million people, there are 149.1 million users in North America, 93.6 million in Asia, 68.2 million in Latin America, 17.6 million in Africa, 11.7 million in the Middle East, 11.6 million in Oceania/Australia, and 3.9 million in the Caribbean (Internet World Stats, 2011). This knowledge of the countries’ IPRs is beneficial for informing HEIs’ recruitment efforts. However, for the purpose of the enrollment management strategic planning it is also important to analyze the IPR growth. According to the data from the last decade, IPR growth puts Africa ahead of other regions, with 2,527.00% growth, followed by Middle East (1,987.00%) and Latin America (1,037.00%), a trend that emphasizes these regions increasing importance

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SNSs and Internet Penetration Rates (IPRs) Facebook, Twitter, and other SNSs take a rather permanent place in the lives of contemporary US students. Many of college attendees, as well as people of more mature generations, can’t imagine their existence without checking their SNSs pages for messages, pictures, and updates. These activities are as much part of our lives as the use of Internet, which essentially allows for the use and the very existence of SNSs. However, something people who live in North America take Internet availability for granted, while this is not a readily available commodity in many parts of the world. Moreover, the effectiveness of SNSs for the Higher Education marketing is heavily connected to the countries’ specific Internet Penetration Rate (IPR). Therefore, college personnel might find it necessary to assess potential students ability to access Internet and, as the result, SNSs.



as consumers of Internet, including SNSs. HEIs that would manage to establish their SNSs in the regions and specific countries with the high IPR growth rate might be able to use familiarity effect in the near future. This strategy could lead to attracting more international students in the future (Internet World Stats, 2011).

SNSs and Diversity of IPR within Different Regions The diversity in IPRs within regions is another factor associated with the success of using SNSs for the recruitment of international students. For instance, while large number of Internet and Facebook users makes Asian market exceedingly attractive for HEIs online marketing, based on the number of users, only four out of 35 Asian countries—China (384 million users), Japan (96 million users), India (81 million users), and South Korea (37.5 million users) —are the leading Internet consumers; the remaining 31 listed countries report having approximately 104 million users collectively. Furthermore, only India and China net additional 10 million Internet subscribers monthly (Lange, 2010). Perhaps, this statistics can explain why, according to an Open Door (2010) report, students from China, India, and South Korea represent the largest group of international students in the US HEIs; Taiwan and Japan hold the fifth and sixth places. The situation is similar in Latin America: 39.4% or 72 million Internet users in Latin America live in Brazil, followed by Mexico (15.1% or 27.6 million), Columbia (11.4% or 22.8 million) and Argentina (10.9% or 20 million). The remaining 16 countries collectively have 22.7% or 40.3 million Internet users. Brazil is also leading this region in the growth of the IPR, while Open Door (2010) identifies a 6% increase in students’ enrollment into US HEIs from this country (Internet World Stats, 2011). The Middle East is equally uneven. Iran has 52.5% or 33.2 million of all Internet users in this region, followed by Saudi Arabia (15.5%

or 9.8 million) and Israel (8.3% or 5.2 million). In the year 2010 Saudi Arabia demonstrated the largest increase in the International student enrolled in the US HEIs. The remaining 13 countries have 23.7% of Internet penetration or 15 million users. In the last decade Iran had exhibited remarkable 13,180.00% of the IPR growth, as did Syria (13,016.00%), while IPRs in countries of Bahrain (88%), United Arab Emirates (75.9%), and Israel (71.6%) are among the largest in the world (Internet World Stats, 2011). Out of 57 countries on the African continent, 46 countries have less than one percent of IPR. Nigeria has 37.1% of IPR and 43.9 million users, followed by Egypt (17% or 20.1 million), Morocco (11.1% or 13.2 million), and South Africa (5.7% or 6.8 million). In the last decade Africa’s Internet and Broadband sector has been rather insignificant, but accelerated tremendously in 2009 and 2010 due to improvements in infrastructure, the arrival of wireless access technologies, and 90% decrease in the Internet cost. Broadband is rapidly replacing dial-up which is detrimental to the speed of connections (Lange, 2011). Overall, majority of world regions, mostly developing countries, are displaying energetic expansion of broadband at the decreasing cost due to marketing competition. This is an important development, because level of access to Internet-based SNSs is highly influenced by the broadband availability. For example, at the minimum broadband speed of 256 kbps, downloading a short (20 MB) college promoting video clip from YouTube will take 10 minutes and 25 seconds in most African countries, compare to 2 seconds at a connection speed of 100 Mbps in Taiwan or Hong Kong (Internet World Stats, 2011; ITU, 2010). Also, there are still huge differences among countries when it comes to the broadband affordability: “in 2009, an entry-level fixed (wired) broadband connection cost on average $190 per month in developing countries, compare only to $28 per month in developed countries” (ITU, 2010, p. 7).

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Countries’ Gross Domestic Product (GDP), IPR, and the Use of SNSs Ability to afford studying abroad financially is another important decision making factor for international students. As it was mentioned in the Open Door (2010) report, almost 70% of all international students, primarily undergraduates, are funded by their families, their home country governments and universities, and foreign private sponsors. Since 2006, the funding by families had fluctuated, but percent of home government funding had been increasing steadily with the largest increase of 26.6% taking place last year, and so did the funding by foreign private sector. As we saw earlier, Internet and SNS penetration rates are also connected with the cost of broadbanding. Perhaps, financial stability of different countries might influence these countries’ IPR growth and, consequently, penetration of the SNSs. In order to test this hypothesis we will compare top 25 places of the international students’ origin. The variables for comparison will include these countries’ IPRs, Internet users’ growth, use of SNSs, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita3. This comparative analysis is illustrated in Table 1. Out of top sending 25 countries, five belong to the “upper middle income” countries, i.e., according to the World Bank categories, countries with annual per capita income from $3,706 to $11,455; remaining 14 countries belong to “high income” countries with over $11,455 per capita income per year (World Bank, 2011). These countries also have been enjoying high IPR and high Internet usage rate, two factors that explain moderate growth of Internet users in the majority of these countries. The remaining six sending countries-India, Nepal, Nigeria, Vietnam, Kenya, and Pakistan- are part of “low income” group of countries with the annual per capita income from $936 to $3,705 (World Bank, 2011). Their IPRs are also lower, but the growth of Internet users is much higher than in other countries and the number of Facebook users is in millions.4 Over the last five years the enrollment of students from Kenya and

Pakistan had been declining, but India, Nepal, Nigeria and Vietnam had been demonstrating consistent growth of the students’ study abroad flow (Open Door, 2010), which is reflected in Table 2. Obviously, more research is required, but these trends—growth in IPR, growth in number of Internet users and strong SNSs membership—can suggest an opportunity for geographic expansion of enrollment strategies, including opportunities for more aggressive recruitment of students from lower income countries through the use of SNSs. Students from these destinations might also be potential candidates for obtaining on-line degrees.

CONCERNS AND BARRIERS Loss of Control Over Content One of the biggest limitations in the use of SNSs is the loss of control over pages creation and content; anyone can create an “official” college account on Facebook, Twitter and other SNSs and share any type of information with the users (Reuben, 2008). For instance, Mascari and Webber (2008) warn that students can use Facebook pages of their college of interest “to get any number of college application essays designed to match your personality and grades… To get the inside scoop on partying, drugs, sex, and cheating” (p. 4). Similar concerns are connected with the use of “blogs” and comments placed on SNSs. Negativity in bloggers’ commentaries can easily and instantly change or create readers’ opinion about any issue (Solis, 2008), including perception of any HEIs. Reuben (2008) says “if your university had a Facebook page, a MySpace page, or uses any of these other tools, there are forums for comments that have the chance of collecting negative remarks and feedback” (p. 7). Marty Bennett (2011) in the NAFSA- run live conversation with the college recruiters makes the same comments. He also emphasizes that “in social media you no longer control the message-it’s about joining the conversation” (p. 2).

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Table 1. Top 25 sending countries: IPRs, Internet users’ growth, use of SNSs, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita Country

IPR

Internet users growth (2000-2011)

Facebook users

GDP per capita

China

35.7%

1,766.7%

391,200

$6,000

India

8.5%

1,520%

23,042,800

$2,800

South Korea

81.1%

107.1%

3,920,160

$26,000

Canada

77.7%

106.5%

18,619,280

$39,300

Taiwan

70.1%

157.7%

8,970,880

$31,900

Japan

73.8%

110.6%

3.059,000

$34,200

Saudi Arabia

38.1%

4,800.0%

1,437,700

$20,700

Mexico

29.2%

917.5%

22,734,740

$14,200

Vietnam

30.8%

12.034.5%

1,281,740

$2,800

Turkey

45%

1,650.0%

23,516,140

$12,000

Nepal

2.8%

1,151.6%

811,780

$1,100

Germany

79.1%

171.3%

10,889,960

$34,800

United Kingdom

82.5%

234.0%

27,806,860

$36,600

Brazil

37.4%

1,340.6%

6,114,340

$10,100

Thailand

26.3%

660.3%

8,669,680

$8,500

69.5%

113.7%

3,654,760

$43,800

Hong Kong France

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425.0%

19,444,660

$32,700

Indonesia

16.1%

1,400%

34,850,920

$3,900

Colombia

48.7%

2,267.7%

11,115,840

$8,900

Nigeria

28.3%

21,891.1%

2,991,200

$2,300

Malaysia

64.6%

356.8%

9,998,440

$15,300

Kenya

9.7%

1,897.8%

1.037,860

$1,600

Pakistan

10.9%

13,716.3%

3,992,500

$2,600

Venezuela

34.2%

831.2%

7,148,100

$13,500

Russia

42.7%

1,825.8%

1,592,680

$15,800

Table 2. Countries with consistent growth of students studying abroad

India

2004-2005

2005-2006

2006-2007

2007-2008

2008-2009

2009-2010

80,466

76,503

83,833

94,563

103,260

104,897

Kenya

6,728

6,559

6,349

5,838

5,877

5,384

Nepal

4,861

6,061

7,754

8,936

11,581

11,233

Nigeria

6,335

6,192

5,943

6,222

6,256

6,568

Pakistan

6,296

5,759

5,401

5,345

5,298

5,222

Vietnam

3,670

4,597

6,036

8,769

12,823

13,112



Increase of Personnel’s Time Commitment For some of the more seasoned admission officers the ability to use SNSs on the same level with potential enrollees involves, as Mascari and Webber (2008) call it, a “giant leap into the techno world of students” (p. 3). The authors emphasize that current or upcoming students are “wired” to function in the digital world and the world of social networks. These students grew up in the different technological environment and are used to different forms of communication and knowledge acquisition. For instance, for many of us, e-mail is the primary source of connecting with peers and colleagues, but Hayes, Ruschman, and Walker (2009) site the work of Kirkpatrick (2009), who insists that “for young people e-mail is how you communicate with elders in formal situation while social networks and SMS are the preferred methods of communication among peers (p. 110). Just in contrary, majority of college admission officers and counselors belong to the generations of “digital immigrants” and “early adapters”, who, similar to immigrants learning new languages, have to learn new technologies and then integrate these technological advances into their lives to avoid professional “extinction” (Mascari & Webber, 2008; Prensky, 2001). Meanwhile, recruitment professionals are charged with the myriads of different duties, which create barriers for them to find time to rewire themselves and become fluent in these “new languages.” Besides, admission offices of many universities, particularly in the smaller liberal art colleges, are often a one-person operation. Investing time into learning new technologies and cultures, maintaining SNSs content, responding to messages, following tweets and blogs, in addition to these individuals’ regular duties, might be, and usually are, time prohibitive5. Additionally, while admission officers recognize the importance of SNSs for recruitment and have general understanding about the content of messages and topics that would attract prospective students (Noel-Levitz,

2009), they still need to have better insight into this younger generation interests and cultures. Many of the admission officers report not having enough competencies to develop content that would be relevant to domestic students; they are even less confident when it comes to addressing international students’ needs and developing SNSs contents that would attract foreign candidates to their colleges’ Facebook pages (Missy, 2011; Thostenson, 2011). Learning and adapting new cultures can help with creating the SNSs’ content and enriching their attractiveness, but these efforts require additional, complex and multifaceted training and, again, time commitment.

“Secondary Nature” of SNSs, Privacy, and Availability of Research Social Network Sites can be very effective in following up and engaging students who have already learned about a particular school. Unfortunately, they are not as effective for creating an initial interest. Noel-Levitz’ (2009) survey of 1000 college-bound students portrayed that before students begin learning about your college and, hopefully, falling in love with it, they have to find it. Their search for colleges starts with Google, MyCollegeOptions or College Board options that bring them to colleges’ website. The website navigation provides perspective students with the variety of options, SNSs and pages are among many of these links. This “secondary nature” is one of the SNSs weaknesses. However, 70% of survey participants expect the presence of SNSs on the colleges’ Website. They value these sites mostly by their content, accuracy and simplicity of navigation (Noel-Levitz, 2009). Presently, there are no established policies that can regulate content of the SNSs messages, the follow up use of this information, and protection of users’confidentiality. Meanwhile, Hayes, Ruschman, and Walker (2009) advise that “once you lose the public trust due to poor security measures, it will be very difficult to regain” (p. 121). Interestingly, users of SNSs in countries

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with the slower IPRs are less concerned with the possibility of their privacy violation. According to research presented in The Economist (“Where networking works”, 2011), “Europeans are increasingly concerned about online data privacy” (para. 1), but Eastern Europeans from countries marked by the slower IPRs, such as, for instance, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, and Cyprus, have a high trust in SNSs. Western Europeans worry about potential misuse of their personal data much more (“Where networking works”, 2011). Another large barrier is connected with the skyrocketing evolution of SNSs and breathtaking speed of their development which surpasses the corresponding research. Currently, majority of information is available through secondary sources, such as blogs, Internet discussions, forums, and various sites, but more primary contemporary scientific articles are needed. Research literature that is more than a year old is in danger in sounding obsolete.

education marketing. Among unique features offered by the SNSs are unprecedented trackability of students’ interests, immediacy in responses to students’ concerns and questions, targeted personalization of recruitment efforts, and low institutional financial obligations. These features can be adopted and used aggressively by any HEIs in the U.S. Growth in IPRs, growth in number of Internet users, and strong SNSs membership in countries outside of U.S. suggest an opportunity for geographic expansion of marketing strategies, including opportunities for more aggressive recruitment of students from lower income countries through the use of SNSs. Perhaps additional research of local, native-language based SNSs, such as Orkut in South America and RenRen in China, is in order which will help in acquiring deeper insights into demands and expectations of local populations. Moreover, students from these destinations might also become potential candidates for obtaining online degrees in the US institutions. The use of SNSs for enrollment purposes requires fluency in the sites’ content and operation which is more typical for “wired” personnel. One way of addressing this need can be the investment into creation of students’ positions whose sole purpose would be to maintain enrollment pages of the institutional SNSs or additional training of the existing staff. Taking into account that marketing through SNSs demands almost no cost, investment into personnel might be warranted. Privacy and control over the content of the SNSs still present areas of concern. Addressing these issues requires additional studying and practical work. Besides, more research is needed to learn about SNS related behavior of the mature population, because this generation is often responsible for financing educational aspirations of its children. Since SNSs aggressively penetrate into everyone’s way of communicating and obtaining information, studying SNSs’ related behavior of “parents’ population” could result in obtaining a competitive edge in the enrollment management strategies. Furthermore, more focused and

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CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

International strategic marketing and positioning are important features of HEIs, particularly because the global demand for higher education is “projected to grow from 97 million students in 2000 to 263 million in 2025” (Ruby, 2005, p. 234), which would make the access to higher education opportunities more restricted and uneven among individual countries and entire continents (Blight, Davis, & Olsen, 2000). Universities in the U.S. can compete for this market niche by sharpening their international recruitment efforts and making these efforts more focused, more specific, and more attuned to the international students needs (Altbach, 2004; Becker, 2009; Lasanowski, 2010). Based on the findings of the above research, we can make a few conclusions and recommendations that might benefit HEIs in the U.S. by providing some additional enrollment strategies for them. The rising popularity of SNSs creates grounds for additional approaches for higher



consistent follow up and studying of the SNSs initiatives should be encouraged among higher education professionals. These strategies could give U.S. system of higher education a viable advantage in understanding the evolving ways of social contacts and communication, in attracting prospective international students and, hopefully, in preventing HEIs in the US from loosing international students to the universities of other courtiers.

REFERENCES Altbach, P. G. (2004). Globalization and the university: Myth and realities in an unequal world. In National Education Association (Ed.), The NEA 2005 almanac of higher education (pp. 63-74). Washington, DC: National Education Association. Anonymous. (2008). How higher ed is using Facebook pages. Retrieved from http://www.academicagroup.com/node/4598 Barnes, N. G., & Mattson, E. (2010). Social media and college admission: The first longitudinal study. Dartmouth, MA: Center for Marketing Research, University of Massachusetts. Retrieved from http://www. neacac.org/docs/uploads/files/amc2010/2010%20 AMC%20Web%20Social%20Media%20and%20 College%20Admissions%20The%20First%20 Longitudinal%20Study.pdf

Coyle, C. L., & Vaughn, H. (2008). Social networking: Communication revolution or evolution. Bell Labs Technical Journal, 13(2), 13–17. doi:10.1002/ bltj.20298 Darrup-Boychuck, C. (2009), Measuring return on investment in international student recruitment. Innovative Educators Webinar. Retrieved from http://www.usjournal.com/en/educators/erecruit/09/ IEMroi.ppt Facebook. (2011). Statistics. Retrieved from http:// www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics Falls, J. (2008, July 31). Social media in two words or less. Retrieved from http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/social-mediain-two-words-or-less/ Golder, S. A., Wilkinson, D., & Huberman, B. A. (2007). Rhythms of social interaction: Messaging within a massive online network. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Communities and Technologies (pp. 41-66). Hayes, T., Ruschman, D., & Walker, M. M. (2009). Social networking as an admission tool: A case study in success. Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, 19(2), 109–124. doi:10.1080/08841240903423042

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Becker, R. (2009). International branch campuses: Markets and strategies. London, UK: The Observatory of Borderless Higher Education. Bennett, M. (2011, May 12). The impact of social media on international student recruitment. Retrieved from http://issuu.com/martybennett/docs/ socialmedia-in-international-recruitment Blight, D., Davis, D., & Olsen, A. (2000). The globalization of higher education . In Scott, P. (Ed.), Higher education re-formed (pp. 93–111). London, UK: Falmer Press. Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210–230. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x Cavazza, F. (2008, June 9). Social media landscape. Retrieved from http://www.fredcavazza. net/2008/06/09/social-media-landscape/

Institute of International Education. (2010). Open Doors 2010. Report on education exchange. Retrieved from http://www.iie.org/en/Researchand-Publications/Publications-and-Reports/IIEBookstore/Open-Doors-2010 Institute of International Education. (2011). Open doors report. Retrieved from http://www.opendoors. iienetwork.org Internet World Stats. (2011). Internet usage in Asia. Retrieved from http://www.internetworldstats.com/ stats3.htm

Internet World Stats. (2011). Internet usage statistics. The Internet big picture. Retrieved from http://www. internetworldstats.com/stats.htm Internet World Stats. (2011). List of countries by digital access index- DAI. Retrieved from http:// www.internetworldstats.com/list3.htm ITU. (2010). The world in 2010. Retrieved from [REMOVED HYPERLINK FIELD]http://www.itu. int/ITU D/ict/material/FactsFigures2010.pdf Lange, P. (2011). Africa-Internet, broadband and digital media statistics. Retrieved from https://www. budde.com.au/Research/Africa-Internet-Broadbandand-Digital-Media-Statistics-tables-only.html?r=51



Lasanowski, V. (2010). International branch campuses: Motivation, opportunities & challenges (Going Global 4). Retrieved from The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education website: http://www. obhe.ac.uk/resources/Going_Global.7e.26_March._ Lasanowski.pdf Mascari, J. B., & Webber, J. (2008, March). Keeping up with the Facebook and MySpace generation: What counselors can do. Based on a program presented at the ACAAnnual Conference & Exhibition, Honolulu, HI. Retrieved June 27, 2008, from http://counselingoutfitters.com/vistas/vistas08/Mascari.htm Mazzarol, T., & Soutar, G. (2002). “Push-pull” factors influencing international student destination choice. International Journal of Educational Management, 16(2-3), 82–91. doi:10.1108/09513540210418403 Missy. (2011, May 17). Re: Using social media for international recruitment: A live collegial conversation [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from http://www.nafsa.org/resourcelibrary/default. aspx?id=26853 National Association of International Educators. (2011, May 17). Using social media for international recruitment: A live collegiate conversation [Online resource library]. Retried from http://www.nafsa.org/ resourcelibrary/default.aspx?id=26853

Solis, B. (2008, August 5). Introducing the conversation prism [@Brian Solis. Defining the convergence of media and influence]. Retrieved from http://www. briansolis.com/2008/08/introducing-conversationprism Thostenson, A. (2011, May 17). Re: Using social media for international recruitment: A live collegial conversation [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from http://www.nafsa.org/resourcelibrary/default. aspx?id=26853 Twitter stats-Popular apps and tweeps. (2011). Tweet Stats. Retrieved from http://tweetstats.com/ twitter_stats Website Monitoring Blog. (2010). YouTube facts and figures. Retrieved from http://www.websitemonitoring.com/blog/2010/05/17/youtube-factsand-figures-history-statistics/ Where networking works. (2011, July 6). The Economist. Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/ blogs/dailychart/2011/07/europe%E2%80%99ssocial-media-hotspots World Bank. (2011). World development indicator database. Retrieved from http://data.worldbank. org/data-catalog

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Noel-Levitz. (2009). Scrolling toward enrollment: Web-site content and e-expectations of college-bound students. Retrieved from https://www.noellevitz. com/documents/shared/Papers_and_Research/2009/ EExpScrollingTowardEnrollment09.pdf

ENDNOTES 1

2

3

Prenski, M. (2001). Digital natives. Digital immigrants. Retrieved from http://www.marcprensky. com/writing/Prensky Reuben, R. (2008). The use of social media in higher education for marketing and communication: A guide for professionals in higher education. Retrieved from http://doteduguru.com/id423-social-media-useshigher-education-marketing-communication.html Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2000). Globalization and education: Complexities and contingencies. Educational Theory, 50(4). doi:10.1111/j.17415446.2000.00419.x Ruby, A. (2005). Reshaping the university in era of globalization. The Phi Delta Kappan International, 87(3), 233–236. ScottElkin. (2011). MySpace statistics. Retrieved from http://scottelkin.com/programming/aspnet-20/ myspace-statistics/

IWS uses different sources for its aggregated information pages. Internet Usage and Broadband Statistics are current from Internet World Country List. The usage rate comes from Nielsen Online, ITU, and official countries statistics. Country population is published by US Census Bureau. All of the above information was comprised on different pages of the InternetWorldStats.com (Internet World Stats, 2011). Facebook World Users and Facebook World Penetration statistics are consolidated for August 31, 2010, from the official number of Facebook users reported in each country or word region (Internet World Stats, 2011). IPR and percentage of Facebook users for this table are collected from Asia Pacific Network Information Center, March 31, 2011; Africa Market and Telecommunication Reports, March 31, 2011; European Communication Market Reports, June 10, 2010, or August 31, 2010; Middle East Market Reports, June, 2010; North America Telecommunication Reports, March 31, 2011, and Telecommunications for



4

Latin America, August, 2010. Because of the later date of the info collection, the numbers in this table are slightly different than those provided by IWS. The data presented in Table 1 is not completely compatible, because statistical reports for Africa, Asia, and North America are dated by March 2011, and statistical reports for Europe, Middle East and Latin America are dated by August 2010.

5

All these observations are relevant to domestic students. However, growing popularity of SNSs and digital technologies around the world, (for instance previously sited sources demonstrated that 70% of Facebook users live outside US), suggests that technological skills and cultural insights of admission officers that are required for attracting domestic students might be needed for attracting foreign students as well.

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Higher Education Marketing:

A Study on the Impact of Social Media on Study Selection and University Choice Efthymios Constantinides, University of Twente, The Netherlands Marc C. Zinck Stagno, University of Twente, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT The importance of the Internet as commercial platform is by now universally recognized, and businesses increasingly adopt online marketing channels at the cost of traditional ones. The social media, being second generation (Web 2.0) internet applications, allow interaction, one-to-one communication, customer engagement, and user generated content. The interest of higher education institutions in social media as part of the marketing toolkit is increasing, but little is known about the potential of these channels in higher education marketing strategies. Even less is known about the role of social media as influencers of future students in the choice of study and university. This article presents the results of a study identifying the role and importance of social media on the choice of future students for a study and university in comparison with the traditional university marketing channels in the Netherlands. The study identifies and describes three market segments among future students based on their use of the social media.

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Keywords:

Customer Behavior, Higher Education Marketing, Market Segmentation, Social Media, Student Recruitment, Web 2.0

INTRODUCTION Social media, a term describing a wide range of a new generation internet applications, has been the issue of intense debate and commercial interest. Central themes in this debate are the effects of the social media on human behavior (Barker, 2009; Kolbitsch & Maurer, 2006), their aptitude as educational environments (Augustsson, 2010; Kabilan, Ahmad, & Abidin, 2010), and their potential as marketing instruments (Constantinides & Fountain, 2008; Ghauri, Lutz, & Tesfom, 2003; Kim, Jeong, & DOI: 10.4018/ijtem.2012010104

Lee, 2010; Mangold & Faulds, 2009; Spaulding, 2010). Press articles, research papers and special journal issues around the subject are increasing, yet little attention has so far been paid to the areas of behavioral analysis and classification of the social media users. While the social media movement is a relatively recent phenomenon the rate of adoption by both the public and businesses is staggering. According to a recent Pew Research Center report (Zickuhr, 2010) 83% of Americans between 18 and 33 years old are already users of Social Networking Sites (SNS). A study done by Statistics Netherlands (2011) showed that 91% of Dutch youths between 16 and 25 years old



were active on SNS in 2010. Forrester Research (Young et al., 2007) predicted a fast growth of global commercial spending on social media technologies (43% increase per year) reaching $ 4.6 billion in 2013. A study by JungleMinds (Koster & Van Gaalen, 2010) showed that 83% of Dutch businesses engaged in social media marketing and eMarketer (2010) estimated that 80% of the U.S. businesses with more than 100 employees will use social media tools for marketing purposes in 2011. This percentage will increase to 88% in 2012 in America, whilst in many countries in Europe and elsewhere the penetration of social media follows similar trends. It is obvious that the social media has attracted the interest of business strategists and is increasingly considered as part of the business marketing strategy. Research in university recruitment has shown the potential of marketing when used by higher education institutions as a student recruitment tool (Gibbs, 2002; Helgesen, 2008; Hemsley-Brown & Oplatka, 2006). A key theme of research in this field is the marketing communication, where gaps between the information that potential students want and the information provided by universities in their traditional forms of communications have been identified (Hemsley-Brown & Oplatka, 2006). These gaps indicate room for improvement in the field of marketing communication for higher education. Engaging with social media as a higher education marketing tool is an attractive proposition, because of the positive business experience on the effects of social media marketing and the high adoption rate of the social media by the younger generation (Boyd, 2008). Improved communications, customer engagement and increasing brand loyalty have been identified as outcomes of this form of marketing. It is reasonable to assume that engagement of social media applications as part of university marketing could contribute to increased enrolment numbers and help prospective students make better-informed decisions regarding their study choice and university selection. However, little is known about how future university students use the social media and what impact the social

media have on the decision making process of future students regarding their choice for a study and university. In the Netherlands in particular, there are some initiatives by higher education institutions on social media. Nevertheless, there is little published research so far on this specific issue. This study aims to provide information about the future university student market regarding their use of the social media. Such knowledge is important for the development or improvement of social media based marketing strategies complementing traditional recruitment strategies, in order to address the existing communication issues and improve student recruitment effectiveness. Three objectives will guide the study: (1) Describe the future student population in the Netherlands by identifying market segments based on their social media use, (2) Explore the influence of the social media on the choice of study and university in relation to traditional communication tools, and (3) Explore the relation between factors influencing the choice of university and social media use.

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This exploratory study based on a national survey attempts to develop a research methodology that can be easily duplicated in other national markets.

BACKGROUND AND RESEARCH ISSUES Social Media and Marketing The social media is a relatively new but fastgrowing category of online interactive applications. These applications are based on usergenerated content rather than supplier-generated allowing peer-to-peer communication and userparticipation (Nambisan & Nambisan, 2008; Shankar & Malthouse, 2009). Constantinides and Fountain (2008) identified the social media



applications (blogs, online communities, social networks, online bulletin boards and content aggregators) as one of the three components of Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2005) next to the social effects and the enabling technologies. Web 2.0 is widely seen as the current stage of the internet evolution. Social media has been widely adopted by the public and has become an important factor of influence in buying behavior. User-generated content and peer-to-peer communication have empowered the contemporary consumers and reduced their trust in push marketing and traditional forms of marketing communication (Eikelmann, Hajj, & Peterson, 2008; Grönroos, 1994; Karin & Eiferman, 2006; Peppers & Rogers, 1993; Thomas, 2007), a trend that begun emerging already during the 90’s (Grönroos, 1994; Peppers & Rogers, 1993). Trust in experts as purchasing influencers is also diminishing and people increasingly base their purchasing choices on peer opinion. According to a study of Opinion Research Corporation (2009) 84% of Americans are influenced by online product reviews written by other customers in their shopping decisions. Research provides evidence that an increasing number of organizations are already engaging with social media as part of their marketing strategy (Barnes, 2010; Barnes & Mattson, 2009). Organizations eager to integrate a social media program into their marketing strategy must realize that the social media is changing the decision-making process in the purchasing behavior of customers by adding a new factor that is beyond their control in the customers’ decision-making process (Constantinides & Fountain, 2008). Marketers also become increasingly aware that the adoption of social media has increased market transparency and reduced their traditional market power and control over both the media and the communication process. They are forced to find new ways to reach potential customers and communicate with them (Parise & Guinan, 2008). Yet social media marketing is not likely to render other forms of marketing obsolete and must be viewed for the time being as an extension of the online marketing. This form

of marketing is successful only if it is based on solid foundations: innovative and high quality products, market oriented organizations, and well-designed websites (Constantinides, 2010).

Higher Education and Marketing “Marketing had once been a term that could be spoken only in the most hushed tones in academia” (Edmiston-Strasser, 2009, p. 146) and ideas about the marketization of educational institutions have often raised serious concerns and objections. According to Anderson (2008), an important objection against marketing practices by higher education institutions was that it would undermine academic standards of quality and excellence. This opinion is shared by Molesworth, Nixon, and Scullion (2009, p. 278), who also warn “that parts of British higher education (BHE) are pedagogically constrained by the marketization that has accompanied its expansion.” Despite the red flags raised about the impact of marketization on higher education, the fact of the matter is that government deregulation and increasing competition (Hemsley-Brown & Oplatka, 2006; Jongbloed, 2003; Maringe, 2006) are forcing higher education institutions to acknowledge the fact that they must market themselves to successfully compete in the national and global markets. However, higher education institutions should not just adapt their traditional approaches, but rather develop comprehensive marketing strategies, and an understanding of their customers’ behavior and related theories (Vrontis, Thrassou, & Melanthiou, 2007). Hemsley-Brown and Oplatka (2006) concluded that “the literature on higher education marketing is incoherent, even inchoate, and lacks theoretical models that reflect upon the particular context of higher education and the nature of their services.” This can be a barrier to higher education marketing efforts since the traditional business marketing fundamentals do not fully address the needs of higher education institutions as they are mostly based on consumptive models (Gibbs, 2002). Gibbs (2002) suggests that higher education marketing has to be viewed from a model of

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collaborative relationships. Other researchers have argued that a relationship marketing approach best fits institutions of higher education (Helgesen, 2008; Klassen, 2002) particularly when regarded from an ethical point of view (Gibbs & Murphy, 2009). For the higher education institutions relationship marketing means building and maintaining a relationship of value exchanges between the institution and the three main customer groups: alumni, current students and future students. The quality of these relationships is positively related to the customers’ long-term loyalty (McAlexander & Koenig, 2001).

Higher Education Marketing and Social Media University websites can provide a basis for an engaging user environment (Weiss, 2008) and the social media is an ideal extension for relational marketing activities due to their collaborative and interactive nature. Literature on strategic issues, case studies or best practices specific to social media as a higher education marketing tools is limited. Nevertheless, U.S. universities are increasingly using the social media as part of their marketing programs (Barnes & Mattson, 2009). Hayes, Ruschman, and Walker (2009) describe the use of a social networking system as a marketing tool by a university in their case study; they found a significant relationship between those who logged onto the social network and the likelihood of applying them to the university. Waters et al. (2009) found that non-profit organizations in general are adopting social networking site profiles, but are not using them to their full potential for relationship cultivation. In the Netherlands, like in many more European countries, there are a few pioneering efforts by higher education institutions to introduce social media as part of their student recruitment programs. University web sites can display links to Twitter or Facebook pages or allow visitors to share information by bookmarking pages as favorites by ‘liking it’ or ‘re-tweeting it’ (e.g., Universiteit Twente, n.d.b). Several Dutch universities have their own

Twitter feeds (e.g., Rechtenfaculteit Leiden, n.d.-b; TU Delft, n.d.-b), Facebook pages (e.g., University of Groningen, n.d.; Utrecht University, n.d.), and often YouTube Channels (e.g., Rechtenfaculteit Leiden, n.d.-a; TU Delft, n.d.-a). There are also some examples of blogs (e.g., Universiteit van Amsterdam, n.d.) but in general blogging is not part of the social media mix of the majority of Dutch universities. In many of the above examples these applications are not used as recruitment tools, but rather as educational tools that are simply meant to improve internal communication. In some cases social media applications used have a clear commercial purpose. Tilburg University (2011) introduced an online forum aiming at recruiting international students for its bachelor programs, and a similar live chat forum was introduced by the University of Twente (n.d.-a) targeting potential students. The Saxion University of Applied Sciences launched a new platform for potential students, allowing them to receive study information from enrolling students in an interactive way (Saxion Hogeschool, 2011). Social media based tactics are so far of experimental nature, usually fragmented and relatively recent. In general, comprehensive social media strategies cannot be found in the higher education marketing domain. However, looking at experiences from the business practices (Constantinides, 2010), one could argue that such strategies can provide higher university institutions with new communication possibilities allowing direct engagement with potential students. Such engagement can involve interaction with university recruiters or interactions with other students during the process of searching for a suitable study and university. Engaging potential students in the social media domain is in principle an inexpensive way for universities to attract and persuade potential students. Social networks or online communities created by schools as part of their online presence can bring together potential student with students who already enrolled (i.e., ‘University Ambassadors’), or with peers looking for similar information and help. Such engagements seem to be very effective ways of persuading the

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contemporary consumer. Recommendations of peers in blogs, social networks, forums, and other forms of social media are playing an increasingly important role in the decision making process, mainly among young persons. A recent study by Bazaarvoice (2012) indicates that 51% of the so-called ‘Millennials’ – people born from the late 80s to year 2000 – are very much influenced in their decisions by recommendations of strangers through user-generated content on social media. Little is known about the efficacy and effects of the social media as recruitment tools for higher education institutions. This study is a first effort to measure the actual influence of the social media as marketing channel on the choice of potential students.

Market Segmentation and Social Media Segmenting a market aims at describing the different types of homogeneous groups that are present in a heterogeneous market to help design and target marketing strategies (Wedel & Kamakura, 2000). Previous research in segmenting online markets was primarily focused on taxonomies of different types of online shoppers (Brengman, Geuens, Weijters, Smith, & Swinyard, 2005; Ganesh, Reynolds, Luckett, & Pomirleanu, 2010; Jayawardhena, Wright, & Dennis, 2007). The level of participation in social media has been found to be an effective basis for describing the different types of social media users (Li & Bernoff, 2008). Constantinides, Alarcón del Amo, and Lorenzo Romero (2010) segmented the users of social networking sites of the ages 16 to 74 in the Netherlands identifying four different segments on the basis of the participation level of social media and the use of these applications as information, interaction and socializations platforms. Segmenting the market of higher education institutions is important to understand the market and target the right customers (Vrontis, et al., 2007). Segmentation studies of future students based on social media use are rare in the literature. However, given the increasing interest of higher education institu-

tions in digital education (Harris & Rea, 2009; Parker, 2011) and higher education marketers in online marketing, the research in this field is expected to expand in the immediate future (e.g., Constantinides & Zinck Stagno, 2011).

METHODOLOGY Research Design The study objectives are met by analyzing empirical data collected through a survey among future university students in the Netherlands. The first study objective aims at identifying market segments based on its social media use. The survey therefore included variables explaining the future students’ use of social media. These variables will be used as input for a post-hoc descriptive segmentation method, which are “the most powerful algorithms for market segmentation” (Foedermayr & Diamantopoulos, 2008, p. 252). Additionally, to explore the relation between social media use and the choice of study and university (i.e., second study objective) and the factors influencing the choice of university (i.e., third study objective), variables explaining these two factors were also included in the survey. The rest of this section will further elaborate on the methodology used to gather and analyze the data.

IGI GLOBAL PROOF Population and Sample

Data were collected by means of a national survey among future university students in the Netherlands. The target population was defined as the students in the last two years of high school following the four curriculum profiles that allow access to higher education in the Dutch education system. Each curriculum profile includes a collection of courses centered on a core subject. At the time of the survey, the available curriculum profiles were science and technology, culture and society, science and health, and economics and society. Preliminary outcomes from the sample show that at the moment of surveying 13% of the high school students in their penultimate year had chosen



higher education study and 19% had chosen a higher education institution, while the majority of students make a decision in their last year of high school. This shows that the last-two-year high school student population is a valid target for higher education marketing efforts. A sample was selected from an access panel with over 120,000 members (Intomart GfK Panel) using the probability method of stratified sampling. This panel is carefully composed to be representative of the Dutch population, and complies with the ISO-26362 international quality standard for access panels. The Netherlands’ twelve provinces were defined as strata to avoid risk of oversampling the densely populated areas in the west. Ensuring the presence of cases from less populated strata will provide a more representative sample in the case that these strata differ from the densely populated ones. Within the strata simple random sampling was used. The target sample size was established at N=400, and the target strata sizes were proportionate to the high school student population distribution over the twelve provinces.

(3) Decision factors influencing the selection of a higher education institution, including questions using a 5-point Likert scale in order to rate the importance of the following decision factors in the selection of higher education institution: the institution’s offer of social activities, the city’s social and cultural facilities, variety of studies, good ratings, good word of mouth on the internet, good and affordable housing, the institution’s offer of cultural activities, the institution’s offer of sporting activities, proximity to parents, friend’s choice for the institution, family’s choice for the institution (adapted from Briggs, 2006; Simões & Soares, 2010; Soutar & Turner, 2002). (4) The use of the social media, including multiple choice and open-ended questions, along with questions using a 5-point Likert scale. These questions were meant to identify the presence of social media site profiles, login frequency, and frequency of activities performed on the social media. The activities, based on the social computing activities according to Li and Bernoff (2008), were divided into three categories, i.e., social engagement, information seeking, and content contribution (Table 1).

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Survey and Data Collection

The survey questions were structured in three groups corresponding to the following three main areas. (1) Socio-demographics, including multiple choice questions regarding gender, age and curriculum profiles. Information about the geographical location of the respondents was known in advance because of the sampling procedure. (2) Information sources used for the selection of higher education studies and university, including questions using a 5-point Likert scale in order to rate the importance of the following information sources: taster days and/or campus visits, university internet site, university brochures, family, friends and/or acquaintances, high school related sources, weblogs, online communities, forums, and social networks (adapted from Simões & Soares, 2010).

The Likert scales were treated as interval scales because these were needed for the variables to serve as input for the cluster and factor analysis. This is common practice, although there is controversy on the issue of the scale being either interval or merely ordinal (Knapp, 1990). The data collection was carried out during spring 2010. Invitation emails were sent out to 3226 people and the 1200 respondents who accepted the invitation were able to access the online questionnaire. A sample size of N=403 was achieved, after excluding 563 cases that did not belong to the defined population, 126 cases that were incomplete or faulty and 108 cases because the strata target was met. The data analysis was carried out with the statistical program PASW (formerly SPSS) version 18.



Table 1. Social Media activities included in the survey 1 Social engagement

Information seeking

Content contribution

Stay in touch with contacts

Search information for school

Share pictures and videos

View pictures and videos of contacts

Read product reviews before purchase

Review purchased products

Make appointments with contacts

Search information about study

Share opinions through forums

Search for new contacts

Search information about university

Share experiences through weblog

Subscribe to RSS feeds

Share information about sport or hobby

Entertaining activities

Vote in polls 1

Measured using a 5-point Likert scale: never – rarely – sometimes – often – always

Segmentation Procedure The data regarding the frequency of activities performed on the social media (see Table 1 for the activities included) were used as input to a factor analysis based segmentation, a technique commonly used to identify market segments (Hoek, Gendall, & Esslemont, 1996). The frequency of activities performed better describes the actual social media participation than measures of the number of social media site profiles or log-on frequency. Factor analysis allows finding underlying factors that explain most of the variability in a set of parameters for the purpose of identifying structure or obtaining data reduction. When used for identifying structure, the resulting factors can be used to define market segments (e.g., Minhas & Jacobs, 1996). Grouping together variables that have the same answer patterns produces a segmentation based on the participation in certain social media activities. A cluster analysis was also used to investigate possible market segmentation, as it is one of the most used techniques in segmentation studies (Hoek et al., 1996). The two-stage clustering approach proposed by Punj and Stewart (1983) was selected for the cluster analysis, as it uses both a hierarchical and a non-hierarchical clustering and therefore minimizes some of the disadvantages of each method. The cluster analysis yielded results similar to those of the factor analysis based segmentation. However, the latter generated

segments with slightly more differentiation, and therefore the factor analysis segmentation is used for the further analysis. The following three steps were followed for the factor analysis segmentation based on the frequency of activities performed on the social media. (1) Principal Factors Analysis was used for the factor extraction and Varimax as the rotation method (increasing the difference between high and low values of the factor loadings). Factor loadings below 0.4 were not considered because they correspond to less than 20% of the explained factor variance, a cut-off value that is often used by researchers (Raubenheimer, 2004). The rotated factor matrix of Table 2 presents the factor loadings. Three factors were identified and none of the variables loaded on more than one factor. The reliability of the factor loadings was assessed by a split sample analysis. No significant differences were found between the split sample and the original factor loadings. The input-variables were grouped as follows: entertaining and social activity variables in factor 1, information seeking variables in factor 2 and content contribution variables in factor 3. The variable share pictures and videos loaded together with the entertaining and social activities although it is a content contributing activity. This variable contains also entertaining and social elements and

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this explains the correlation. The variable subscribe to RSS feeds loaded together with content contribution although this is an information seeking activity. In fact, subscribing to RSS feeds is a more active form of information seeking (i.e., collecting and combining information). This could explain the correlation with the more active content contribution variables. (2) The factor analysis from step (1) revealed a structure in the data, but is in itself not a segmentation (Stewart, 1981). This step uses the found structure to segment the cases. Three factor-scores are calculated for each case. They consist of the mean of the scores of the factor variables and represent the case’s average participation in the activities belonging to the respective factor. Cases with an average participation of ‘more than sometimes’ on the factor variables were assigned to the respective factor. Table 3 shows the percentage of cases assigned to each factor. Three main groups of cases were found: cases not assigned to any of the factors (29.5%), cases assigned to factor 1 but not to the other two factors (39.7%), and cases assigned to factors 1 and 2 but not to factor 3 (21.8%). The three main groups of cases form the three segments in the social media market that for the purpose of this study were named basic users, social users and informational users. Smaller groups present in the sample were discarded as segments but included in the three main segments in order to keep the segment size large enough to be useful. The segments found are characterized by participation in distinct social media activities. (3) Behavioral and demographic differences between the identified segments were analyzed. The significance of the differences was assessed using Pearson’s chi-square test of independence, a test that is commonly used for this purpose (Slakter, 1965). The null hypothesis of the test (stating that a variable is independent of the segments) is rejected for test values with significance

lower or equal to 0.05, corresponding to the usually accepted 95% confidence level. It should be noted that this test does not imply any direction of causality, but, as is the purpose for this study, indicate a relation between segment and variable.

RESULTS Segmentation of the Dutch Student Market The typology of the three segments can be inferred from the levels of activities carried out regularly by the clusters as described below and illustrated in Figure 1 (1) Basic users: This segment is composed of cases that are not assigned to any of the factors and represents 29.5% of the market. It is characterized by the low levels of social media use, limited to low levels of entertaining and social activities. (2) Social users: This segment includes cases belonging to factor 1 but not to factor 2 and represents 40.7% of the total population. Entertaining and social activities are the main reasons of this segment to use social media; social users can be characterized as passive users. Interestingly, the majority of the segment is actively engaged in only two information exchanging activities namely the sharing of pictures and videos. (3) Informational users: This segment includes users that are engaged in the type of activities described by factor 2 and represents 29.8% of the market. Informational users resemble the social users in terms of their entertaining and social activities, but unlike the social users they are much more engaged in information-seeking activities.

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An interesting finding is that future university students make limited use of the social media when it comes to more active forms of use like sharing content of different forms or actively



Table 2. Rotated factor matrix factor 1 Stay in touch with contacts

0.871

View pictures and videos

0.817

Make appointments with contacts

0.805

Share pictures and videos

0.726

Entertainment

0.613

Search for new contacts

0.501

factor 2

Search information about study

0.882

Search information about university

0.849

Search information for school

0.790

Read product reviews before purchase

0.500

factor 3

Share opinions through forums

0.652

Review purchased products

0.652

Share experiences through weblog

0.613

Subscribe to RSS feeds

0.577

Vote in polls

0.544

Share information about sport or hobby

0.533

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contributing content like product reviews and writing comments on blogs and forums. The gender and curriculum profiles followed in the secondary education differ significantly between the segments as showed in Figure 2. Most males are basic users, while most of the females are social users. Furthermore, a larger proportion of females are informational users, characterizing the females as more “so-

cially engaged” users than the males. Moreover, students following the science and technology curriculum profile are mostly basic users, while students following the culture and society curriculum profile are mostly social users. Figure 3 shows the social media applications where respondents maintain at least one profile. Considering the full sample the Dutch Social Networking Site (SNS) Hyves is the most

Table 3. Percentage of cases assigned to the three factors Entertaining & social variables (factor1)

Content contributing variables (factor3)

NO

YES

Information seeking variables (factor2)

Information seeking variables (factor2)

NO

NO

NO

29.5%

YES

0.0%

YES 1

5.2% 0.0%

3

YES

39.7%

2

21.8%

3

1.0%

2

2.8%

3

Forms the segment Basic users Grouped together to form the segment Social users 3 Grouped together to form the segment Informational users 1

2



Figure 1. Percentage of segment performing certain activities regularly on the Social Media (N=403)

Figure 2. Gender and curriculum profile composition of the segments (N=403)

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popular among future students in the Netherlands (88.4%), followed by the video content community YouTube (60.1%) and the SNS Facebook (40.3%). Significant differences were found between the basic users and the other two segments. As expected, larger portions of the social users and informational users maintain multiple social media website profiles. Also, these two segments log in more frequently into their profile than the basic users. Almost all of the social users (95.2%) and a large majority of the informational users (89.2%) log in at least once per day, compared

to about half of the basic users (49.5%). The informational users have the highest number of social networking profiles in all popular social media applications except one (Hyves). Interestingly, a rather small percentage of users from all three segments have a Twitter profile.

Social Media as Information and Orientation Sources for Future Study The survey participants were asked to rate the impact of different information channels



Figure 3. Percentage of segments maintaining a profile on a given Social Media website (N=403)

(both traditional and social ones) on their final choice of a university study and institution. Figure 4 shows the perceived impact expressed in percentages of the segment population per information channel and the ranking of the information channels in descending order according the responses of the sample as a whole. The three most useful information channels were traditional ones: taster days and campus visits, official university websites, and university brochures. The four social media application types mentioned in the survey as information channels – weblogs, communities, forums, and social networks – rate lower than the traditional channels. Although informational users, likewise the other user types, rank the social media lower than the traditional information channels, they find them more attractive as study information sources than the other segments do. These findings require further investigation since future students are heavy users of social media applications (Figure 3). Possible explanations for these facts and implications for higher education marketing are discussed in the conclusions section.

in percentages of the segment population per choice factor and the ranking of the choice factors in descending order according to the responses of the sample as a whole. The three most important choice factors were: the institution’s offer of social activities, the city’s social and cultural facilities, and the presence of a great variety of studies. The friends’ and family’s choice for the institution ranked last. There were some significant differences between the segments rating of the factors. The institution’s offer of social and cultural activities was valued most by informational users. The city’s social and cultural facilities were more important on the choice of institution for both social and informational users, compared to the basic user segment. Furthermore, social users valued the factor reputation through online word of mouth and hearsay more than basic users, and informational users valued this factor more than social users. The implications of these findings for higher education marketing are discussed in the conclusions section.

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Choice Factors and Social Media Use The survey participants were asked to rate the importance of several factors on their choice of an institution for higher education. Figure 5 shows the perceived importance expressed

DISCUSSION This study aims to provide an insight into the use of social media as a social networking platform, information source and communication tool by future higher education students in the Netherlands. Next to this the study examines the impact of social media on the choice of study and



Figure 4. Percentage of segments that found given sources (very) useful in their choice for a study and university (N=403) * distribution among segments differs significantly (p ≤ 0.05)

higher education institution. This information can become the basis of a recruitment strategy, making the social media an integral part of the marketing program. Social media marketing is a relatively new terrain increasingly attracting the attention of field marketers and researchers. Higher education institutions are already experimenting with social media marketing. However, the number of studies on social media marketing and their effectiveness are still limited, and very little is known about the suitability of the social media as tools for higher education marketing. Despite efforts of higher education institutions in the Netherlands to engage the social media as part of their recruitment activities, in most cases it is not possible to talk about comprehensive social media marketing strategies. In most cases the efforts are exploratory and so far no research or evaluations of these activities has been published. This study aims at helping university marketers to understand the market structure and the future students’ behavior as the basis for developing effective social media marketing strategies for higher education institutions. The first study objective was to identify market segments of future university students in the Netherlands depending on their participation in social media related activities. The market segmentation was carried out using

two different methods: a cluster analysis and a factor analysis. The segmentation based on the factor analysis proved to be more useful than the one based on cluster analysis, because the former resulted in more differentiated segments. The study identified three segments in the Dutch market of future university students, with distinct profiles and clear usage patterns of social media. These segments are:

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(1) Basic users (29.5%) have low level of participation in online informational and social activities. (2) Social users (40.7%) have high level of participation in social activities and intermediate level in informational activities. (3) Informational users (29.8%) have high levels of participation in social and informational activities. The second study objective was to examine what impact the social media as communication and marketing channels have on the choice of university study and institution. The data analysis shows that future students rank the social media last in a list of information channels that influence their choice of a study and university. This finding is in contrast with what one would expect considering the high popularity of social



Figure 5. Percentage of segments that found given decision factors (very) important in their choice for a university (N=403) * distribution among segments differs significantly (p ≤ 0.05)

media among young people: 95.1% of the future students maintain a profile on a social media website and 77.5% of them log in at least once per day into their profile. While this discrepancy requires a more thorough investigation, there are a number of possible explanations that can form the basis of a number of hypotheses for future research. One possible explanation for the low importance of social media as a source of influence for future students could be the lack of relevant content. This is due to the low engagement of such tools by universities as public relation and direct marketing tools. Most internet users expect to see links with corporate blogs, discussion forums or social networking applications like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Delicious, Flickr, and Digg on the web pages they visit. A large majority of universities do not provide online visitors with such options on their home pages and some universities are limiting their attention on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Lack of exciting and innovative applications, but also lack of other forms of social media like online communities, blogs, forums, and bulletin boards make it difficult to connect with future students. Creating attractive social media applications and connecting with potential students is therefore a major

challenge for university marketers. This requires the allocation of resources, a different approach to marketing (from one-to-many to one-to-one) but also a new organizational structure of the marketing departments and consistent social media-focused policies: monitoring the social media domain, keeping these applications upto-date and utilizing the customer input. Finally, the third study objective was to explore the dependence of factors influencing the choice of university on social media use. It is evident that several issues beyond the curriculum and the reputation of a university play important role in the choice of a higher education school. As Figure 5 indicates, the availability of cultural and social facilities also influences the pupils’ choice. It also looks like there is a relation between these choice factors and social media use; the most advanced social media users among this target group are also significantly more interested in the aforementioned issues when making a decision for a university. Regarding the general behavior of future students in social media environments, the study indicates that they are heavy users but the large majority uses social media applications for two of the three types of activities investigated, these being social interaction and information

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seeking. The low degree of content contribution (with the exception of sharing pictures and videos) in this population restricts the volume of user-generated information that could be useful for choosing a study. The lack of suitable higher education social media platforms, as mentioned earlier, can be a reason for the low availability of contributed content. This leads to the question as to how university marketers can energize present students and future students to contribute more content, preferably content that is also beneficial to their institution. The challenge for marketers and management is to find ways to stimulate influential individuals and brand advocates to provide comments and reviews in university-sponsored forums or online communities, and also publish in their own online social networks, blogs, or other forms of social applications. This is a practice already implemented by many business marketers, with very positive results on brand awareness, acquisition, and customer loyalty. Considering the former, we can argue university marketers should approach the social media in a proactive way. The simple presence in the social media space is not enough for successful higher education marketing. Recruitment officers should actively and continuously engage the social media in their promotional mix, understand the online behavior of potential students, and accept that the customer is in fact a powerful party. Strong institutional commitment is very important and university marketers must be willing to allocate resources in this form of communication. Marketing strategies utilizing the social media present a promising domain for higher education institutions, despite reservations as to the marketization of higher education. Higher education institutions are still in the infancy stage of this approach and have a lot to learn. Field experience suggests that the approach to social media channels as communication tools must be different from the traditional mass media. The focus of social media-based marketing should be on two-way communication, dialog and engagement rather than using the social media as broadcasting channels or advertising

platforms. While cost reduction and increasing effectiveness can be serious arguments for higher education institutions to engage social media as part of their marketing strategies, such strategies require a redesign of marketing departments and changes in communication approaches: from one-way communication to listening to customer voice and customer engagement. While most higher education marketing departments are not familiar with this type of communication, university management must make a serious effort to restructure and acquire personnel with the right capabilities. One less visible yet important problem with engaging social media strategies is the very essence of these channels, namely the user generated content. The deployment of such media could expose serious internal problems to the public and disseminate complaints by incumbent students or even personnel to a large scale. Openness is a serious advantage, but also a disadvantage for organizations trying to keep things hidden from public scrutiny. The openness of the social media can therefore mean trouble for some higher education institutions and reputation management must become a part of the marketing agenda. Another weakness of engaging social media strategies can be the need for substantial organizational resources in order to monitor and utilize the online discussion created within such channels.

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LIMITATIONS AND ISSUES FOR FURTHER RESEARCH Regarding the limitations of the study we should emphasize that the sample was composed to present a reliable picture for the Netherlands, but one must be cautious when generalizing the results to countries with different cultures and different levels of information and communication technology maturity. Another limitation is that segmentation results depend on the method and the segmentation bases used. Additional research in this domain is very much welcome, including different segmentation methods and



segmentation variables, but also longitudinal studies. This study already provides some interesting insights into the online behavior of potential students and also provides the basis for developing further research propositions. An issue requiring further investigation is whether the social media play in fact a more important role as source of study information and advice than this survey indicates. A fact from the survey is that recommendations from family, friends and acquaintances play a major role in their choice of university and study (Figure 4). An interesting issue for further research is the role of social media and in particular of social networks in bringing future students in touch with these parties when searching for study information and advice. Considering the extend of use and importance of social networks for young people it is legitimate to assume that indeed some of the input from family, friends and acquaintances is provided through these channels. It is also known that social networks are excellent platforms for word of mouth and viral marketing. If this assumption is true then the real impact of social media on the choice of potential students might be much higher than the research outcomes shown in Figure 4. Research regarding the use of social media for marketing purposes is still in its infancy. This media is a relatively new phenomenon, with a history of explosive growth in fast-changing environmental and technological contexts. It could be useful for higher education recruiting officers to closely monitor the behavioral developments of the student market regarding their social media use and the role the social media plays as an information source in their selection of a study and university. Lastly, it might be rewarding to attempt to segment future student markets using other segmentation criteria such as lifestyle, behavior, or perceived benefits, and contribute to the development of new higher education marketing models.

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You Name It:

Comparing Holistic and Analytical Methods of Eliciting Preferences in Naming an Online Program Using Ranks as a Concurrent Validity Criterion Michael J. Roszkowski, La Salle University, USA Scott Spreat, Woods Services, Inc., USA

ABSTRACT Current and prospective students (n =133) were surveyed about their preferences for a name for a new online series of courses to be launched by a university. Preferences for each of five names were solicited by means of analytical ratings, holistic ratings, and rankings. All three techniques were employed to assure that the most appropriate name for the program was selected, but this also afforded us the opportunity to study several theoretical issues: (a) Do the different methods lead to discrepant decisions at the aggregate level? (b) Is the holistic rating or the analytical rating approach more closely related to the rankings? (c) To what extent is lack of agreement between ratings and rankings due to lack of differentiation in ratings? The authors find that at the aggregate level all three methods suggest the same name for the program; the holistic rating is slightly more highly correlated with the ranking; and the lack of differentiation in ratings is one reason producing inconsistencies between ratings and rankings.

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Keywords:

Analytical Rating, Holistic Rating, Name Preferences, Ranking, Rating

INTRODUCTION The elicitation of preferences typically involves asking the respondent to indicate a choice by either “rating” or “ranking” a set of stimuli. Not only do the relative merits of ratings and rankings continue to be debated, but there is also the ongoing controversy as to whether holistic or analytic ratings work best. One issue that does

not seem to have been adequately addressed in the literature, which we explore further, is whether holistic or analytical ratings are more strongly related to rankings. Furthermore, we examine the degree to which non-differentiation in ratings accounts for the lack of agreement between each type of rating and ranking. Finally, we examine whether there is homogeneity of variance in ratings across ranks.

DOI: 10.4018/ijtem.2012010105 Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.


ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF RANKING VERSUS RATING Inappropriately, the terms rate and rank are sometimes used interchangeably as if they were synonymous, disregarding a fundamental difference. That is, a rating requires one to assign a value to a stimulus using a common scale, whereas a ranking asks one to compare different objects directly to one another by arranging them in some order with respect to some attribute (such as importance, agreement, quality or preference, etc.). Paulhus (1991) identified three types of potential response biases with rating scales: social desirability bias, acquiescence bias, and extreme response bias (i.e., stringency and leniency). The chief virtue of ranking is that the procedure prevents the respondent from failing to differentiate between stimuli due to response styles bias such as acquiescence or extreme response (Baumgartner & Steenkamp, 2001; Berkowitz & Wolkon, 1964; Douceur, 2009; Harzing et al., 2009; Shuman & Presser, 1981; Toner, 1987), but the drawback is that it may force the respondent to artificially differentiate between items that may in fact be viewed as equivalent. Likewise, ranking does not allow for determination of the degree of difference between the objects being compared. Ranking is also a more time-consuming procedure; on average, it takes three times longer to answer a ranking than a rating question (Munson & McIntyre, 1979), although it is argued that the process thereby produces better quality data. According to a review by Krosnick (1999), the improvement in data quality occurs because ranking demands a greater degree of attention and respondents thereby make fewer mistakes when using this answer format. Overall, Krosnick considers ranks to generally be more reliable and have higher validity with criterion measures in a variety of contexts. Comparisons of the merits of absolute performance appraisals (various rating formats) and relative (various ranking formats) have been the focus of much research in industrial psychology. Generally, relative formats are more

valid measures of actual job performance when a “hard” criterion exists, such as sales volume (Goffin et al., 1996; Heneman, 1986; Nathan & Alexander, 1988). Moreover, Hartzig et al. (2009) found rankings to superior over ratings in cross-cultural studies. O’mahony, Garske, and Klapma (1980) used a signal detection index of difference to determine whether rating or ranking is preferable for identifying differences in food flavors, and report that ranking is superior. Although ranking is not subject to the acquiescence bias and extreme response bias from which ratings can suffer, ranking is subject to other errors. For one, there is the so called terminal error whereby items appearing first and last on a list are over-ranked in relation to items in the middle of a display (Wagner & Hoover, 1974a, 1974b). Moreover, ranking is context dependent and the ranks assigned to a given stimulus can shift dramatically depending on how many elements are being considered (Krosnick, Thomas, & Shaeffer, 2003), although that criticism may also be true of ratings (cf. Hsee, 1996). If too many items are ranked, low test-retest reliability can result (Krosnick, Thomas, & Shaeffer, 2003; Peng, Nisbett, & Wong, 1997), especially for the lower ranked items (Ben-Akiva, Morikawa, & Shiroishi, 1991). From a statistical perspective, rankings are problematic because they are ipsative scores, meaning that they lack independence since the prior rank determines the possible ranks of remaining ones (Bean & Papadakis, 1994; Dunlap & Cornwell, 1994; Van Deth, 1983). Therefore, conducting a conventional factor analysis on rankings is controversial, but it is possible to do it with other models (Jackson & Alwin, 1980; Cheung, 2004; Hino & Imai, 2008).

IGI GLOBAL PROOF

AGREEMENT BETWEEN RATINGS AND RANKINGS Typically, at the aggregate level, rankings and ratings lead to the same conclusion (e.g., Barnard & Ehrenberg, 1990; Driesener & Romaniuk, 2002; Russell & Gray, 1999; Rankin



& Grube, 1980; Stillwell et al., 1981) although Herk and van de Velden (2007) have reported that the degree of correlation varies across countries due to culturally-based response tendencies (e.g., Germany=.77, France=.75, Spain=.65, Italy=.64, UK=.62), which other researchers (e.g., Harzing, 2006) have also observed. Moreover, examining the relationship between the holistic rating and the ranking of each of the nine values in of Kahle’s (1983) List of Values (LOV) in five EU countries (UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain), van Herk and van de Velden (2007) determined that the relationship between ranks and holistic ratings is heteroscedastic, with smaller variance in ratings for the highest and lowest raked items than for the items with middle ranks. They reported (p. 1102): “Across all countries, people seem to have the most difficulty in assigning scores to the values that they consider to be ‘of medium importance.’ For example, when assessing nine values, those ranked at ‘5’, ‘6’ or ‘7’, were given ratings of between‘4’ and ‘9’. By contrast, respondents appear quite capable of separating the most important values from those considered to be of least importance.” It has been proposed that disagreement between ranks and ratings may reflect either the respondent’s lack of real preference or it may be due to an unwillingness to differentiate (DeCarlo & Luthar, 2000; Klein, Dülmer, Ohr, Quandt, & Rosar, 2004; Mills, 1991). There is some empirical support for the latter supposition, but the evidence is equivocal. Russell and Gray (2004) found that respondents with a strong concordance between their ranks and their ratings exhibited a larger spread in their ratings, suggesting greater differentiation. Likewise, Krosnick and Alwin (1988) reported that when participants who rated a set of stimuli (values) similarly-- termed low differentiators-were excluded from the sample, the ratings correlated more strongly with a conceptually related variable. In contrast, Lee, Soutar, and Louviere (2007) report that removing low differentiators only had a minimal impact on improving the quality of ratings. They reported that when

examining ratings about the importance of nine different values, certain values that conceptually should be negatively correlated were in fact showing positive correlations in the ratings but not in the rankings. For example, the contradictory statements “having security in life” and “having an exciting life” correlated +.37 (p < .01) with each other when rated on a five-point Likert scale, but as logically should be the case, the correlation for these two items was -.22 (p