BUS602: Marketing Management

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