Examining Marketing Officers' Demographic Factors' Influence on MIHE Scores at California Community Colleges

Abstract

Research indicates that one way to investigate a college's dedication to marketing is to examine the role, influence, and support the marketing officer receives on their campus. Based on the literature's premise that marketing officers are a measure of commitment, this study explored the relationship between Marketing Index of Higher Education (MIHE) scores and marketing officers’ demographic factors of gender, pay, education, staff support, and education. This study found a marketing officer's demographic factors had little to no influence on a California community college's score on the MIHE. Thirty one California community college marketing officers participated in the on-line survey. T tests and Pearson's correlations were utilized to measure the relationship between MIHE score and the officer's demographic factors. One of the major implications of this study is that a marketing officer's gender, pay, education, staff support, and education do not alone predict whether a community college is a marketing organization. However, as the extant literature suggests, a better indicator of a college's ability to market itself may be the president's commitment to marketing's philosophy and practices. Therefore, when college leaders want to improve their college's reputation they may want to first determine their own commitment to marketing before they hire personnel to staff their marketing offices and implement their campaigns.