Logos, ethos, pathos and the marketing of higher education

ABSTRACT

This article utilises rhetorical analysis as a method to investigate course level marketing communications for undergraduate fashion marketing degrees in England. The purpose of this method is to explore the persuasive appeals of Aristotle’s triad of logos, ethos and pathos, how they are used and how these appeals could differ by university type. Sixteen course pages were analysed, with the analysis of course web pages shows a clear distinction between ‘types’ of university, with Post 92 institutions relying heavily on appeals to emotion (pathos) and giving more focus to ‘value for money’ that would be a concern to their students. Russell Group and Specialist universities rely more on appeals to ethos (credibility) and logos (fact/data) to market their courses. This research finds evidence of market segmentation, demonstrated through the different use of persuasive appeals to express the course focus, and giving insight to their target audience.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• marketisation
• rhetorical analysis
• fashion marketing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The OfS is a new public body, established in law by the Higher Education and Research Act 2017.

2 Official title ‘Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education: An Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Experience in England’ (Browne, 2010).

3 In this context, the communicator being the university and course.

4 https://unistats.direct.gov.uk/

5 https://www.ucas.com

6 Courses at Scottish and Welsh institutions were also excluded from the main analysis, due to the different funding landscape in the devolved nations. Course page data was located and saved between the 14th and 28th May 2017.

7 https://www.businessoffashion.com/education/rankings/2016

8 It is acknowledged by the author that the recent Teaching Excellent Framework (TEF) results would impact this slightly, but due to data collection being undertaken before TEF results were available this was not included. It should also be noted that while TEF results will be informative, they will largely be placed on the universities main pages, rather than individual course pages as subject level TEF is not yet available.