Student-perceived organizational support and perceived employability in the marketing of higher education

ABSTRACT

In the current context, the need for marketing in institutions of higher education is undeniable. The specification of the student not merely as a ‘customer’ means that traditional marketing no longer has sufficient capacity to explain the behavior of the student body. In this study, a four-level relationship marketing model is tested to check the influence of perceived organizational support (POS) and perceived employability on identification with the institution and the perceived price-quality ratio and how these influence student satisfaction. In addition, the constructs prior to POS and perceived employability are identified, which are explicit enough to enable specific marketing actions to be carried out. As POS is a construct defined for the labor market, its use applied to relational marketing comes up as something innovative.

To this end, Likert scales have been designed and validated to measure these constructs. The results of this test show how the perception of organizational support depends on the relationship of the student body with the administration and management of the center. Likewise, the perception of employability depends on the perceived reputation and the perception of the promotion of employability. Furthermore, it is confirmed that satisfaction is positively related to identification and the perceived price-quality ratio, which in turn are positively related to organizational support and perceived employability.

KEYWORDS:

• University marketing
• perceived organizational support
• perceived employability
• satisfaction
• higher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Irene Trullas http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8010-3178

Pep Simo http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4803-7550

Oriol R. Fusalba http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3427-8820

Angels Fito http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7782-7685

Jose M. Sallan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4835-0152