Acompañamiento en la resistencia comunitaria en la Capilla

Identifying stakeholder expectations and satisfaction towards higher education is the starting point for universities in designing effective marketing strategies (Filip, 2012). Kotler & Fox (1995) identified the main university stakeholders as being classified into sixteen major publics. They are current students, prospective students, faculty, parents of students, administration & staff, alumni, suppliers, competitors, government

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agencies, business community, mass media, foundations, trustees, accreditation organisations, local community and the general public (Kotler & Fox, 1995). Marketing strategies in the higher education sector usually starts with the identification of consumer needs regarding the structure and types of programmes. An institution’s identity is formed based on the nature and quality of its educational programmes and their degree of differentiation in relation with competing academic offers (Filip, 2012). An effective marketing strategy should result in higher education programmes being designed, developed, tested, piloted, provided and refined in cooperation with consumers and other stakeholders (Kotler & Fox, 1995).

Ivy (2008) described the marketing mix as a set of controllable marketing tools that an institution can use to produce the response that it wants from its various target markets. It consists of everything that a university can do to influence the demand for its services. Brown et al (2009) identified the three segments that universities seek to recruit as school leavers, mature and international. Ivy (2008) used the 7P approach to outline the various components of the marketing mix for higher education:

1. The product: This is the complex bundle of benefits that is being sold to the customer to satisfy his / her needs. As students normally pay universities for the services they receive and ultimately the degrees that they are awarded, the qualification obtained is the product. The curriculum of the degree is central to the product element and must be appropriately developed and adapted to the needs of the students (Ivy, 2008).

2. The price: This component of the marketing mix refers to the tuition and other fees charged for the degree that is being studied at the university. Tuition fees not only affect the revenues that a university derives from enrolment on a course, but also affects the students’ perception of the quality of the programme. This is especially true in the MBA sector of the industry. Thus pricing policy must consider the specific target profile and effect on overall university image, because some consumers perceive more expensive services as adding substantial value (Ivy, 2008).

3. The place: This is the distribution method that the institution adopts to deliver the tuition to students in a manner that meets their expectations. It is designed to create service availability in terms of time and geographical distribution of teaching and learning (Kotler & Fox, 1995). Recent technological developments

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have enabled universities to increase service availability by delivering programmes by distance learning through the post, email, Internet, video conferencing, block release and podcasts. This has helped many institutions to gain market share and reach those consumers who perceive geographic or time difficulties in physically attending university courses.

4. The promotion: This includes all the tools that universities use to provide prospective students with information on its offerings and maintain dialogue with other stakeholders (Ivy, 2008). Due to the wide variety of publics with which a university needs to communicate, it employs a number of tools, including advertising, publicity, public relations and sales promotional efforts. 5. The people: This element includes all the employees of the university that come

into contact with current and prospective students at the university (Ivy, 2008). In a marketing orientated university, all academic, administrative and support staff have a role to play in ensuring that the service delivered meets and exceeds the expectations of students. Due to the inseparable nature of educational services, the skills and professionalism of tutors have a decisive influence on students’ satisfaction with existing programmes (Filip, 2012).

6. The physical evidence: These are the tangible components of the service offering that are used by the target market to evaluate the quality of its services (Ivy, 2008). They range from the appearance of buildings, library facilities and grounds to the quality of teaching materials and the user – friendliness of the institution’s website. An institution’s facilities help to increase the tangibility of its offerings and are often the most visible issues perceived by students in their intention to differentiate between various universities (Filip, 2012).

7. The Process: This element refers to the way things happen and includes all of the administrative and bureaucratic activities that students undertake during their time at the university (Ivy, 2008). They include processing of identity cards at registration, dissemination of results, applications for accommodation and appointment systems for personal tutorials. Every aspect of the process must meet or exceed the student’s satisfaction for service delivery to be successful. Mazzarol & Soutar (2001) suggested that the flow of information to prospective students should be substantially increased to help them make effective decisions and offer them control over the decision – making process. They identified the three key

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promotional elements for international education as advertising in the mass media, personal selling and publicity & professional promotion.

Many educational institutions have used newspaper, radio, TV, billboard and other types of mass media advertising to project images of their students, buildings and facilities. The use of testimonials in such advertising improves understanding and may help prospective students better evaluate the institution’s offerings. Whilst mass media advertising has been used successfully by several institutions in their home markets over the years, it has not been as successful in attracting international students (Mazzarol & Soutar, 2001). Most institutions tend to depend more on Internet marketing as a more effective and efficient means of reaching prospective international students.

In the education sector, personal selling is the use of university staff to provide information & advice to prospective students at open days, exhibitions, school visits and other events in order to convince them to choose the institution (Mazzarol & Soutar, 2001). It can also be seen in the use of overseas recruitment agents who advise prospective students on their study destinations and earn a commission from institutions for successful enrolments. Despite the controversies surrounding the use of recruitment agents to promote international education, they are seen as an important source of information and support for prospective students. They assist prospective students by providing advice and information on courses and institutions, providing practical support in the completion of documentation and arranging travel & accommodation. Their ability to provide face-to-face communication about the relative merits of particular institutions and facilitate the student decision-making process by guiding them through the substantial quantity of issues to be considered demonstrates their value in the international student recruitment process. Hulme et al (2013) in a survey of the African students enrolled on a university programme found that all of them had been recruited via the services of an agent.

Publicity entails the use of ‘generic’ promotion strategies to increase market awareness of the supplier country and is usually carried out by government agencies (like the British Council) or collaborative groups of institutions like the Russell Group (Mazzarol & Soutar, 2001). Professional promotion refers to promotional activities undertaken by

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individual institutions to raise their own profile or desirability in specific markets. They include presentations by staff to prospective students, provision of prospectuses & information booklets and student word of mouth referrals. Mazzarol & Soutar (2001) suggested that personal sources of information such as word of mouth referrals are needed to overcome some of the perceived risks associated with the complexity and intangibility of international education.

According to Gibbs & Knapp (2012, pp. 4), there are four key areas that suggest that the appreciation and use of marketing process can significantly help the future provision of education. These issues partly explain the reasons why marketing and student recruitment have become much more important to UK higher education institutions:

1. The complexity of the offering: Degree programmes represent an educational experience for the student, who is simultaneously a consumer of that experience. 2. The complicated social roles of institutions: The independence of faculties make it difficult to add value to some programmes through changes in practice without significant resource investment.

3. The increasing importance of financial performance: Institutions must shape their market offerings in order to attract investment in the form of tuition fees, grants, research funding and donations.

4. An approach to the market that sees students as informed consumers: The essence of the marketing process is to realise that students are no longer a homogeneous group. Institutions must understand their differing consumer needs and adapt to them.

Gibbs & Knapp (2012) felt that higher education institutions need to plan and execute the marketing mix in order to create exchanges that satisfy individual and institutional objectives. Marketing has to influence the level, timing and composition of demand in ways that help institutions to achieve their strategic objectives (Gibbs & Knapp, 2012). Despite the obvious benefits of the application of the marketing concept to higher education, some writers have highlighted potential problems. Newman & Jahdi (2009) suggested that the application of the marketing mix to higher education has had some negative consequences and that the marketing rhetoric does not always match the educational reality. Naude & Ivy (1999) argued that higher education is unable to fulfil

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the customer retention goal of marketing because the percentage of students that remain loyal to an institution and stay on to pursue postgraduate courses is too small to be the focus of an institution’s marketing strategy. They also highlighted the extent to which institutions must balance the need of the marketplace with the need to preserve academic integrity and freedom.