ABSTRACT This study aims to extend the boundary of knowledge about internal branding, which touches on two disciplines: marketing and human resources management in an attempt to understand the constructs of internal branding and their impact on the commitment of service providers (higher education teaching staff members) so that they support the brand promise of the university and maintain a competitive edge for private universities in Egypt that function in a very competitive market. Data were collected from 402 members of teaching staff to test the proposed model and hypotheses using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results prove the fitness of the suggested model and that the constructs of internal branding (supervisory support, effective internal communication, clear vision and values) do have a significant impact on teaching staff commitment except for the construct of directed training programs (DTP), contrary to previous literature which might be because teaching staff commitment may require variables other than training programs which in turn rings a bell for private universities’ management to partially reconsider the budgets directed to training for teaching staff or it could be due to cultural differences as previous literature was mostly conducted in different cultures, thus a value addition of this study.

ABSTRACT Integrated marketing communication (IMC) involves the seamless coordination of communications and marketing media within organizations. While scholars in higher education (HE) have explored the internal benefits of successful IMC, there’s a lack of contributions examining student satisfaction and benefits. Recognizing that perceived values are subjective, this study analyzes student value creation in HE from a student-centric perspective through IMC. Employing qualitative means-end analysis, we conducted 30 interviews with graduate and undergraduate students at a top-tier HE institution in Europe. The thematic analysis exposes multidirectional ties between attributes and higher value forms. This paper contributes by presenting a hierarchical model of student value structures elucidating the utility derived from IMC strategy elements. Results offer HEIs insights to devise student value propositions aligned with sought-after values via communication strategies. By identifying the underlying reasons for the value students place on their experiences, HEIs can adapt and tailor their communication approaches. This novel perspective ensures HEI IMC strategy success, enabling flexibility in constructing strategies that deliver the desired value to students and fall within the HEI’s capacity to provide.

ABSTRACT University reputation is a key element of the institutional strategy, and it is affected by the development of the Internet and digital media as a place for debate and exchange of views. Reputation is the common perception of an object or person, and the Internet is the place where most communication takes place today, so the purpose of this work is to carry out an analysis of the reputation of Spanish public universities in the online environment. The behaviour of Spanish public universities and their repercussions in different media (Twitter, forum, blogs, news websites) are analysed. The main results indicate that notoriety is correlated with the research activity indicators of the universities. From the results obtained, it is possible to formulate some recommendations addressed to university management and administration to promote scientific dissemination and improve the communication of the institutions in such a way that their global reputation may benefit.

ABSTRACT Universities face a lot of challenges, such as increased competition and budget cuts. To overcome these challenges, universities need to consider the role of students as key stakeholders in the value co-creation process. Guided by the Transformative Service Research (TSR), this study explores the individual and institutional outcomes of students’ citizenship behaviors in a higher education context. Drawing on a sample of 343 students and using structural equation modeling, the results show that students’ citizenship behaviors have positive outcomes for both students and universities: they positively affect students’ psychological well-being and university brand image. Furthermore, the study indicates that university service quality mediates the relationship between students’ citizenship behaviors and students’ psychological well-being as well as the relationship between students’ citizenship behaviors and university brand image. The findings of this study have implications for the decision-makers who wish to build a strong brand image and offer superior service quality.

ABSTRACT The objective of this study is to develop knowledge on why some accredited programmes are more distinct. Accreditation and distinctiveness are both important in higher education: maintaining accreditation signals quality, while distinctiveness helps programmes meet their stakeholders’ preferences. Our application of two-stage valuation theory implies that programmes are higher on distinctiveness when they view distinctiveness as beneficial without it posing a substantial risk to their reaccreditation. We quantitatively test the implications of two-stage valuation theory through text analysis of 369 mission statements of business programmes with accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). We examined mission statements, because the AACSB requires that mission statements reflect programmes’ aspirations such as distinctiveness. The multisource data show an inverse U-shaped relationship between accreditation tenure and distinctiveness. The data also show that public programmes have lower distinctiveness than private programmes across lengths of accreditation tenure. This research contributes by helping to shift the discussion from whether reaccreditation helps or harms distinctiveness to how and when reaccreditation impacts distinctiveness. Further, it demonstrates that affiliation serves as a boundary condition on the effect of reaccreditation on distinctiveness.

ABSTRACT To survive amid fierce competition and reduced government funding, educational institutions struggle at various levels, from launching programs to publicizing them. Consequently, the promotional content they produce has changed over the years in many countries. This study investigated whether these neo-liberal trends have impacted the discourse of Pakistani universities’ promotional content, especially the interpersonal relationship between the prospective students and the university. Incorporating Halliday's Functional Grammar with a Critical Discourse Analytical perspective, the textual analysis of the interpersonal meta-function of language reveals that the universities predominantly employ declarative to realize the speech function of a statement; thus, conveying information without generating an imagined dialogue with the students. Following this, imperatives are used to perform the illocutionary function of offer and in rare cases conditional, optative and question statements. The results also established that the universities employ modalities and modulations sparingly which accounts for the text producers’ preference for conveying their propositions in the form of facts, hence leaving no scope for the reader to form his/her opinion. The infrequent use of pronouns in Pakistani universities leads to a lack of liveliness and affinity in writing. The textual analysis reveals that the universities uphold a manifest distance from potential students.

ABSTRACTHigher education institutions (HEIs) increasingly use social media to communicate with stakeholders and the public. The success of these efforts on individual platforms has been assessed by a growing number of studies recently. However, comparative research across different platforms and types of HEIs is lacking. This study analyzes factors influencing user engagement across different HEI types and the three most widely used platforms – Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter). The study relies on a full sample of all social media posts published in 2019 (n = 42,006) by all 42 Swiss HEIs. Hereof, a random sample of 1500 posts per platform was manually coded. Several factors at the content-level turned out to vary across platforms, thereby pointing to the need for HEIs to tailor their social media communication to the respective affordances of different platforms. However, results also show patterns across platforms, including the importance of visual communication and the development of a large followership for driving user engagement. In contrast, we found no impact of publishing time, publishing frequency, and content length. This, among other findings, indicates that strategies focused on creating high-quality content rather than a large quantity of content yield better engagement results for the social media communication of HEIs.

ABSTRACT In recent years, there has been an influx of research in higher education (HE) branding, which has emerged as an important strategy for HE institutions to gain a competitive advantage and increase market share. This study aims to uncover the intellectual structure and emerging trends of HE branding by performing a bibliometric analysis on 435 research articles retrieved from the Web of Science between 1998 and 2021. Two bibliometric techniques were applied: co-citation analysis and co-word analysis. The co-citation analysis revealed five clusters of HE branding literature: (i) HE brands and branding frameworks; (ii) Antecedents and consequences of HE brand components; (iii) Internationalization in HE branding; (iv) HE communication strategies; and (v) HE brand value co-creation. The co-word analysis emphasized the importance of the co-creation of HE brand value as a key research theme from 2016 onwards. This study also offers future research directions to advance the HE branding literature.

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has required new marketing strategies for leveraging brand equity among Higher Education Institutions. Previous research has uncovered the impact of electronic word of mouth in the Higher Education Institutions’ service industry, so this research extends our knowledge of the effects of electronic word of mouth on Higher Education Institutions’ brand equity and, additionally, on social media engagement. A quantitative approach was adopted, using questionnaires among Higher Education Institutions’ students and alumni. The results, obtained through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), provide evidence of the contribution of the positive valence of electronic word of mouth to brand equity, emotional brand attachment, and social media engagement. The findings suggest customers are becoming more susceptible to positive electronic word of mouth. The research extends current knowledge by demonstrating the relevance of positive valence to electronic word of mouth in Higher Education.

ABSTRACT This paper investigates influences on the decision-making process, during the consideration of applying to university, for UK further education college students from a widening participation background (Uni Connect). Much previous research has explored the international student recruitment market, however, there is relatively little literature concerning UK home student recruitment, particularly related to widening participation groups. Three semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight, second-year, level 3 vocational students, during their final year of college study. Findings suggest that Uni Connect students seek multiple sources of information and engage with a multitude of touch points, with the context of these interactions playing a significant role in influencing university choice. The exhibition of predominately rational rather than emotive behaviours and the use of multiple touch points, suggests that Uni Connect students take an iterative approach to their decision-making. The decision-making process appears to be individualised, with no equivocal or homogenic pattern emerging.