Interrogating the crisis in higher education marketing: the CORD model

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -Higher education (HE) marketing the world over is in a state of crisis that manifests itself on three fronts. First, there continues to be sizeable resistance towards the marketing idea in the academy of many universities across the world. Second, HE itself has failed to identify its core business without which the sector can not have a firm marketing foundation. Third, HE marketing has not adequately domesticated itself and continues to rely on imported wisdom from the business sector. The purpose of this paper is to explore these problems using evidence from international research and propose a curriculum focused marketing model which should help refocus HE marketing, domesticate it appropriately and reduce the internal resistance with which it is frequently associated. Design/methodology/approach -The paper begins by examining the imperatives for marketisation in HE. It then reviews the extent of the three obstacles using evidence from research in different parts of the world. It concludes by offering a curriculum focused marketing model (CORD) which could serve the basis for future HE marketisation. Findings -Based on wide ranging data from the developed and less developed countries, obtained through national and regional surveys and a review of secondary findings, the paper suggests that a way out of this crisis is for universities to identify their core business as the development of their curricula and to base their marketing on a proposed curriculum centred marketing model. Originality/value -The CORD model represents an attempt at addressing the crisis that HE marketing faces today.

The marketing orientation as a university management philosophy: a framework to guide its application

“…We coincide with other authors (Maringe 2004;Maringe 2005;Maringe and Mourad 2012) in the view that the origin of the resistance is to be found in a poor understanding of marketing discipline. This resistance and lack of familiarity is even observed among university managers themselves (Newman 2002;Maringe 2005;Hayes 2007;Filip 2012), which proves to be particularly problematic given that it is they who ought to spearhead the change, spreading marketing philosophy among the rest of the staff of the universities they direct (Tran et al 2015). Consequently, having once set out the reasons that lead us to the opinion that marketing philosophy, correctly applied, is eminently suitable for balancing the interests of universities, stakeholders and society, we propose a framework designed to facilitate its implementation in universities.…”

“…Among the most powerful causes of this delay in the application of marketing principles and practices in the HE field is the scant training and insufficient expertise that many university managers possess in this area (Newman 2002;Maringe 2005;Hayes 2007;Filip 2012). Perhaps that is why, in many institutions, marketing is still "under suspicion" for being a concept imported from the business world (Naude and Ivy 1999;Maringe 2005;Hayes 2007) and, as pointed out by Nedbalová et al (2014), different authors "consider marketing to be an evil practice which damages education by using business techniques (p.178)".…”

“…Universities in different parts of the world have witnessed important transformations of the environment in which their activities unfolded (Soutar and Turner 2002;Maringe 2005;Bugandwa 2009;Rivera-Camino and Molero Ayala 2010;Filip 2012;Tanrikulu and Gelibolu 2015;Tran et al 2015;Llonch et al 2016) and have observed that different phenomena intensified the degree of competition in the sector and brought in market elements (García Sanchis 2012; Tanrikulu and Gelibolu 2015;Tran et al 2015). Aware of the greater intensity of competition, universities have shown more interest in developing and maintaining a favourable distinctive image or reputation (Curtis et al 2009;Maringe and Mourad 2012), since " [it] has been identified as one of the main factors affecting higher education (HE) choice (Hemsley-Brown and Oplatka 2016, p.113)".…”

Service recovery in higher education: Does national culture play a role?

“…Previous research has focused on the application of marketing principles to higher education in areas such as branding (Hemsley-Brown & Goonawardana, 2007;Lowrie, 2007), student recruitment and decision-making (Cubillo, Sanchez & Cervino, 2006;Maringe, 2005), the marketing mix in higher education (Bingham, 1987;Stewart, 1991), student retention and relationship management (Helgesen, 2008;Armstrong, 2003), international education marketing (Cubillo et al, 2006;Mazzarol, Soutar & Seng, 2003), student services quality and satisfaction (Abdullah, 2006;Athiyaman, 1997;Ivy, 2001) and student satisfaction guarantees (Gremler & McCollough, 2002).…”

The impact of the changing English higher education marketplace on widening participation and fair access: evidence from a discourse analysis of access agreements

“…The theoretical conceptualisation for this analysis draws on marketing theory as an explanation of institutional behaviour (Gibbs and Knapp 2002;Maringe 2005) and employs the methodology of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1993). Marketing theory suggests that where full information is not clearly available (for example in relation to how good a degree course will be for career development) consumers will look for alternative discursive indicators of positionality (Graham 2013, 80) or classification based on 'a set of specialised recognition rules' translating into 'a generation of legitimate meaning' (Bernstein 1990, 29).…”