University Branding
This scholarly article concerns the branding of universities and the various components of university branding as perceived by the consumers of education. Colleges, universities, and other non-profit organizations are now keenly aware of the value of branding.
Literature Review
The concept of branding is not new. It is in use for many centuries.
According to William due to the perceived risks attached with the purchase of
services, consumers
preferred to use such services which are familiar to them and which they
can trust.
Keeping this thing in mind, universities and governments in different
parts of the world
have started developing attractive policies, especially, based on the
provision of quality
education in neat, clean and safe environment. Globalization has made
the education as a
tradable commodity. Therefore, Higher education institutes has started
marketing
activities to position themselves in the global market while analyzing
their strengths and
weaknesses and identifying the unique selling points. For this purpose
they are focusing
on "Brand Equity Development" to get prominent position in the global
market.
Muller and woods while talking about the brand management,
emphasize the
importance of creation of brand image and the reliability of brand name
in the service
industry. In another study they recommended that for strong brand
equity, service brand
should concentrate on three main issues i.e. Quality, Service delivery
and Image. They further suggested that quality, service delivery
and image
collectively helped in developing the brand's trustworthiness.
In order to understand the consumer's perception of brand, it is
imperative to understand
the consumer behavior. Belch and Belch while defining the
consumer behavior
said that it is a process and actions people took on when they are in
the process of search,
select, purchase, use, evaluate and dispose of some product or service
in order to get
satisfaction for fulfillment of their desires.
Ugala, has identified that there are two types of behaviors a
consumer shows, one
is cognitive and the other is experience based behavior. Dalqvist and
Linde
typified behavior in four categories, rational, learned, unconscious and
social behavior.
Kotler has developed a five steps consumer decision process for
making some
purchases.
Figure 1: Buying decision process
He also discussed that it is not necessary that consumer always adopt
all the stages while
making day to day decisions. However, while making some complex
decision, consumers
normally passed all of the five stages. Same is true in case of
University Selection
Decision. Bone during his study regarding the choice of the
university stated that
the decision making in university selection involved a complex process.
So as per his
findings university selection decision involved all the five steps of
Kotler's purchase
decision model. Cubillo, Sanchez and Cervino, has also identified
the same. This
has established the fact that the university selection is a complex
decision which is made
after very careful evaluation of alternatives.
Chen, is of the view that the graduate students while making
university selection
decision gave maximum importance to the "University" and then to the
programs offered
by the university. Pimpa, also has the same point of view.
Similarly, according to
Binsardi & Ekwulugo; Chen Zimitat; Chen;Cubillo et al.;
Mazzarol & Soutar; Shah & Laino; Bone, at
the time of decision,
the prospect student consider several things like country of
destination, institute itself,
country's environment, program quality, safety etc. However, the image
and ranking of
the university play the decisive role during this decision making
process. This shows that
the brand equity and its recognition obtained great importance for most
of the universities
around the world especially due to the increasing trend of
internationalization. If the
image of the university is properly managed, it will provide the
competitive edge to that
university. The basic attributes attached with the university are
getting much importance
because these attributes formulate the brand which is now commonly used
as
differentiating tools among competitors. Aaker was of the view
that the brand
equity is the product of perceived qualities, brand loyalty, brand
awareness and brand
image.
Similarly, Keller had discussed two dimensions of brand equity,
one is brand
knowledge and the other is brand awareness. Cob-walgren et al
used the same
components i.e. quality, awareness, and brand image which were used by
Aker to
measure brand equity. Prasad and Dev also used the same
attributes in their study
as identified by Aaker. Same was done by Lamb and Low Jr. Yoo et al in their research also used the same three components of Aaker. Cobbwalgren et al., in their research presented a
perceptual measure used to measure
the customer based brand equity. They used the concept given by Aaker. Their
study showed that the brand equity has a direct relation with the
consumer behavior.
Higher the brand equity higher will be the consumer's preferences and
purchase
Intentions. Therefore, in our study we used the attributes such as brand
awareness, brand
acceptance, and brand quality to determine the brand image which is the
main constituent
of brand equity of the university.
Awareness
Keller explained brand awareness is developed due to the repeated
exposure of the
product or service. Hearing, seeing, or thinking about some specific
brand could be the
factors involved in developing the awareness and this may result in
sticking of brand into
the memory of the customer. Keller 1993 while following Aaker, 1991 has
considered
brand awareness as a key attribute in brand equity. He also recognized
the brand
awareness as a combined effect of brand recognition and top of mind
awareness
(TOMA).
Hoyer and brown, Lin and Chang, Keller Jiang
observed
that brand recognition plays an important role in influencing consumer's
choice.
Therefore, keeping its importance in mind, we conceptualize that the
brand awareness is
the product of brand recognition and top of mind and once the awareness
for brand has
been developed, it ensures the acceptance among the prospective clients
which leads
towards the greater market share. Therefore, due to its importance for
enhancing the
brand acceptance through increased market share and developing the brand
image, we
can conclude that the brand recognition and top of mind (TOMA) creates
awareness,
awareness develops acceptance which ultimately resulted in creating
brand image.
Figure 2: Awareness and acceptance process
Quality
Brunsø et al., and Nadim & Noorjahan while discussing
the quality
explained that the product/service quality can be judged in two
different perspectives: the
objective quality and the perceived quality. Objective quality is that
which can be
checked technically, measured, and verified whereas the perceived
quality is the
expectation of product/service perceived by the consumer. Aaker 1993,
1996 and 1998,
defined the quality perceived by the customer as one aspect of brand
equity because
according to him it is direct relation with the readiness to pay a
higher price and purchase
intention. Low and Lamb 2000 were come up with the opinion that the
perceived quality
developed the brand superiority perception. Similarly Szymanski and
Henard (2001) also
considered perceived quality as one of the factor which helped in
developing a
satisfactory purchase decision.
Taylor and Baker also hypothesized that satisfaction and
perceived quality has a
positive relation with intention to purchase. Like the other industries,
the issue of
provision of quality services in universities is also gaining more and
more attention of the
researchers of higher education sector.
Researchers like
Kwan and Ng, Cloete and Bunting, Abouchedid and Nasser, Chua, Telford and Masson, De Jager, Oliveira-Brachado
and Marques; Pareda et al., Srikantham and Dalrymple; and Voss
et al.
have discussed the importance of service quality in the higher education
sector. They
recognized the enhanced service quality performance as the only tool in
the industry of
higher education which attracts and retains student clientele. In this
perspective, Bitner, et
al., 2000 identified two satisfaction factors; one is overall
satisfaction and the other is
service encounter satisfaction. The overall satisfaction is the
relationship specific whereas
the service encounter is transaction–specific.
Figure 3: Constructs for Perceived Quality
Therefore, in light of above discussion we may consider perceived
quality as one of the
construct of our study as it create a perception of superiority of brand
which is helpful in
differentiating a brand from the other.
University Image (Brand Association)
Brand image has nothing to do with the product or service features,
product or service
technology or the product or service in actual, it is actually developed
through knowledge
provided to customer about the product or service. In case of higher
education sector the
image of the institute is important especially for the external
customers like parents,
friends, industry etc. who have influence on the choice decision of the
students.
Therefore, a good image is a top branding tool in case of higher
education industry.
Cubillo et al., has suggested that in the service industry the
image of institution is
developed by the institutional prestige and financial incentives.
According to Engel and Miniard, the image of any brand is
developed due to the
collective impact of brand association and consumer's perception.
Beckwith & Leman; Hill & Neeley; Levitt; Nicholls et al., while discussing the
image of the higher education institute discussed that the reputation of
university is the
most important factor for selection decision especially, in the absence
of experience as it
reduced the perceived risk. For good image, quality and recognition are
the best sources
of competitive advantage.
Therefore, as proposed by Cubillo et al. along with prestige and
financial
incentive, we also used quality and acceptance as the construct of image
in our study.
Most importantly it can be said that the branding in service industry
helped in reducing
perceived risks associated with the purchase decision and also helped in
reducing the
search cost. The above literature helped us in establishing the fact
that the awareness
creates acceptance and acceptance of any brand in combination with
quality develop a
power full brand image and the power full image than create the brand
equity in the
service industry.
Brands are considered important as they help the customer to narrow down
the choices
whereas, the big brands are normally considered as the
only choice in
some specific need. Similarly, brand
recognition and
reputation is also very important for universities as they require
recognition for their well
doing. Every university is working hard to get some prestige which is
something
everybody hopes to attain. According to temple "the brand should
meet
consumers' psychological needs through the values which they come to
believe the brand
embodies". During the mid 80's Park, Maclnnis, and Jaworski
talked about the
needs that have influence in consumers brand selection. These are (1)
functional needs,
(2) symbolic needs, and (3) experiential needs. Functional needs provide
solution to any
problem. In case of university it
will be the service
quality. Symbolic needs respond the costumer's need to be linked with
some particular
group. In case of university it would
be the image
developed through awareness and acceptance. Experiential needs normally
provide
satisfaction for internal pleasure desires. For
university we can consider brand equity as experiential need.
After a detailed study, we have been able to develop a connection among
the views of
different researchers with reference to the brand equity. The literature
review has
revealed that there is a strong relationship between the brand equity,
brand image, brand
association, brand awareness and brand quality. High level of awareness
means high
acceptance, therefore, high acceptance along with high perception of
quality creates
strong affiliation with the brand i.e. strong image and Positive image
of the brand will
help in developing favorable perceptions means greater brand equity.
Therefore, in order
to check the existence of association between the university brand
equity and its
attributes i.e. university brand awareness/acceptance, university brand
image and
university service quality, we used the same components as were used by
Aker first in
1991 and later on in 1996 i.e. brand acceptance/awareness, perceived
quality and brand
association. Due to the similarity in the definition we replace brand
association with
brand image.
Figure 4: Model for University Branding