Marketing for Higher Education: A Relationship Marketing Approach

ABSTRACT

Retaining students is becoming increasingly important for institutions offering higher education. Thus, ideas from relationship marketing (RM) should be of great interest to university and college officials entrusted with student enrollment and retention. The RM approach means that great importance is attached to the creation of student value. The value proposition to students should match their needs. The creation of value should be regarded as an ongoing process over the lifetime of the relationship. Student surveys should be carried out and analyzed thoroughly in order to identify key success factors for student value and student loyalty. This study is based on a research model in which loyalty is the ultimate variable. Path coefficients of direct and indirect drivers of loyalty are estimated by way of a structural equation modeling approach, and implications for decision makers and further research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Marketing for higher education
• relationship marketing
• reputation
• student loyalty
• student retention
• student satisfaction
• student value
• Norwegian university college

The author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

1. This definition was introduced in August 2004 and replaced the former definition from 1985: “Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchange and satisfy individual and organizational objectives.”