Descriptive Evidence on the Role of Corporate Brands in Marketing Higher Education Services

Abstract

The intangible and inseparable nature of services is generally thought to increase the risk perceived by consumers when making purchase decisions. This higher level of perceived risk arises because, relative to physical goods, services are characterized by higher levels of experience and credence qualities and lower levels of search qualities. Building brand equity for a service is increasingly recognized as a means of mitigating that risk and creating a strong identity for a service in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The service sector chosen for the empirical research was higher education services in Egypt. In essence, higher education is a professional service characterized by a high level of experience qualities which make the purchase risky and means that branding is important as a source of reassurance to students about the quality of what they will receive. The paper begins with a brief overview of relevant literature and then proceeds to outline the components of brand equity providing the conceptual framework which guides the research. Subsequently, the empirical work is presented, focusing on the comparison between experienced and inexperienced consumers to assess the extent to which corporate brands are able to communicate information about key features of a service. Finally, the results of the survey are discussed and the managerial implications are presented. [Service Science, ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]