Symbolic resources and marketing strategies in Ontario higher education: a comparative analysis

Abstract

Existing research on marketing within PSE tends to focus on homogeneous groups of high-status organisations. This study ameliorates this gap in the literature, conducting a comparative analysis of promotional materials produced by public universities and community colleges in Ontario, Canada. We find that these two groups draw on unique strategies to communicate their quality to external constituents. Public universities emphasise faculty and institutional-level accomplishments, such as research grants and rankings. Meanwhile, community colleges, lacking access to these symbolic resources, employ corporate-like strategies, such as taglines and non-traditional logos.

Keywords:

• Marketing
• Canada
• mixed-methods
• comparative

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the creators of Rapidminer Studio for making this powerful tool available free of charge to academics. Without their generosity this paper would look very different.

Notes

1. We excluded Redeemer University College from our sample, although it is a member of the COU, given that it is a private university. We also excluded Cambrian and La Cite College given that their websites were in French.