Education as Service: The Understanding of University Experience Through the Service Logic

Abstract

With the marketization of UK higher education, this paper develops a framework from services marketing that can assist universities in understanding what market orientation means and how students would value their offerings. Our study shows that the core service in a university experience is a learning experience that is co-created, and that the value is emergent, unstructured, interactive, uncertain, with a hedonic dimension. Our paper modifies the gap model of service quality to show that an ideological gap exists that may also impede the quality of the university experience. We propose that a one-sided expectation by students leads to student consumerism and disengagement. Paradoxically, we show that a true student-orientated marketing puts the university ideology at the centre of marketing efforts and that marketing may well be an effective tool to communicate such ideologies.

An Appealing Connection–The Role of Relationship Marketing in the Attraction and Retention of Students in an Australian Tertiary Context

“…Within the higher education sector relationship marketing is defined as "a set of marketing activities or actions that attract, motivate, and enhance existing potential students' relationships as well as students' parents, relatives, friends, references groups... emphasizing on retaining existing students until their graduation, and attracting further students" (Al-Alak, 2007, p.4). However, as a method by which to engage students in the higher education sector, relationship marketing has only received limited attention (e.g., Bowden & Wood, 2011;Ng & Forbes 2009;Litten 1998;Helgesen 2008). This is despite calls for higher education research to specifically investigate the role of relationship marketing in the establishment of student loyalty (Helgesen 2008;Clemes, Gan & Kao 2008).…”

“…This may include the more emotional and experiential aspects of the educational service (Arnett, German & Hunt, 2003). Given that students may be viewed as a key component in the co-creation of the tertiary experience, an understanding of students' orientation towards the institution and its effects on student loyalty is important (Ng & Forbes 2009). …”

“…It is consequently important for organisations to understand the nature of the student-university relationship. This evolution in strategic orientation has seen the need to adopt a highly customer-oriented strategy, with relationship marketing emerging as a widely accepted approach within the industry (Helgesen, 2008;Ng & Forbes 2009). Organisations now seek to develop educational relationships with students, rather than simple transactional deals between the exchange partners (Gibbs 2001).…”

“…This may in turn, assist in the attraction and retention of the student base. In addition, many institutions now recognise the need to adopt a services orientation in the industry (Nicholls, Harris, Morgan, Clarke & Sims, 1995;Ng & Forbes 2009). Given the extended nature of the higher education service encounter, management of the service experience is essential to ensuring positive outcomes for both the student and the institution (Umashankar 2001).…”

University scandal, reputation and governance

“…Gray et al (2003) identify a university's reputation as second, only to learning environment, as a main brand positioning dimension for higher education institutions. In fact, Ng and Forbes (2009) consider reputation to be a core value-creating activity for universities, and other research (Ressler & Abratt, 2009) takes a stakeholder lens to the issue of university reputation, seeking a greater understanding of how different stakeholders perceive the reputations of their respective institutions.…”