Alumni Loyalty: Systematic Literature Review

ABSTRACT

The term alumni loyalty (AL) is widely used by scientists in various disciplines and particularly often in discussions of the key factors influencing alumni contributions. However, research in this field varies considerably in its assumptions and methods and contains contradictory findings. Additionally, there is no consistent definition of AL. This situation makes it difficult for the university administration to see the overall picture or to evaluate which results are most reliable and should be used as the basis for practice and policy decisions. A systematic literature review (SLR) would address these problems by identifying, meticulously evaluating, and integrating findings of the relevant studies. To date, no SLR has been undertaken in the field of alumni loyalty. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, the paper conducts an SLR in this research area. Second, the study provides a more comprehensive definition of alumni loyalty. The research identified 102 relevant articles and classified them according to seven theoretical approaches: microeconomics, charitable giving, management, relationship marketing, educational science, services marketing, and the integrative approach, which combines the above disciplines. Having determined four primary aspects of AL (behavioral, attitudinal, material and nonmaterial), the paper derives four quadrants of AL definitions and assigns each publication to one or two of them. Following this step, the overall picture and definition of AL were derived. The findings can be used by academics as a framework to position new research activities appropriately and by practitioners as a roadmap to enhance AL rate.

KEYWORDS:

• Alumni loyalty (AL)
• customer loyalty
• decision-maker
• systematic literature review

Funding and acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the valuable comments provided by the anonymous reviewer on an earlier version of this manuscript. Additionally, the authors would like to thank the Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden) for the research grant entitled “Saxon Scholarship Program Regulation,” which made this research possible.

Notes

1. http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php

2. Publish or Perish is software developed by Tarma Software Research that retrieves and analyses academic citations. It uses Google Scholar to obtain the raw citations, then analyses these and presents a wide range of citation metrics in a user-friendly format. This program is “provided free of charge for personal non-profit use courtesy of www.harzing.com” (Harzing & Van Der Wal, 2007, p. 3).