Information sought by prospective students from social media electronic word-of-mouth during the university choice process

ABSTRACT

Universities are increasingly utilising social media for student recruitment, the most highly used channel for prospective students. However, research on information gathering and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM)-seeking behaviours on social media is generally absent. This paper explores the information sought by prospective students on social media, by analysing data from actual conversations on Quora, a social media question-and-answer site. Content analysis of 865 questions was conducted to examine the information regarding the factors students seek when selecting a university. The findings report information requirements on five major dimensions, namely reputation, career prospect, learning and leaching, administration and student life. This paper contributes to higher education literature by revealing the university information search factors students most commonly seek on social media, utilising a unique data source derived from actual online questions. Through understanding the eWOM-seeking behaviours of prospective students, universities can more accurately target their social media content.

KEYWORDS:

• University choice
• choice factors
• information requirements
• social media
• electronic word-of-mouth

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.