The Nature of Stakeholder Satisfaction with Marketing Education

Abstract

The current article represents a cautionary tale in continuing emerging marketization practices as the dominant form of marketing with higher education. Specifically, a review of three important emerging literature streams (i.e., quality-of-life, service-dominant logic, and stakeholder orientation) all appear to support calls for moving beyond typical (short-term, hedonistic) measures of consumer satisfaction associated with the delivery of higher education toward satisfaction judgments based on higher-order forms of happiness (i.e., prudential and perfectionist forms of happiness such as eudaimonia). This conclusion suggests that the nature of long-term value co-creation associated with higher education should focus on quality of life and well-being. Critical to the success of moving marketing strategy of institutions of higher education in the direction asserted herein will be embracing a primary strategic marketing objective of convincing stakeholders to value long-term, eudaimonic forms of happiness and satisfaction over the current psychological, short-term, hedonistic satisfaction forms assessing today's marketization practices. A series of propositions are offered to help guide marketers in embracing this perspective.

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“…This was accompanied by a focus on short-term effects rather than long-term goals, which include building a network of relations (see Arum, Roksa, 2011;Dziewanowska, 2016). The authors argue that education is increasingly treated as a private good, which is associated with the perception of students as consumers of knowledge, and not as subjects guided by critical thinking (Taylor, Judson, 2014;Dziewanowska, 2016). At the same time, students are treated as clients who are unable to clearly define their own expectations of services provided by universities (Ryńca, Miśko, 2016).…”

Experiential dimensions in educational services in higher education

“…liczbą wydanych dyplomów) (Taylor, Goodwin, Melton, Hunter, 2011). W działaniach tych często pomija się główny (wydawałoby się) cel edukacji wyższej, jakim jest uczenie i kształcenie osób myślących krytycznie oraz aktywnie podchodzących do procesu edukacji (poprzez współtwo-rzenie wartości) (Taylor, Judson, 2014).…”

Best Buy and Showrooming: A Critical Thinking Case Exercise Based upon Service Dominant Logic and Value Co-creation

“…However, our experience is that the methods used to instruct students in critical thinking exercises such as the case we propose herein pays significant dividends in terms of learning outcomes. That said, in today’s higher educational environment typically emphasizing marketization practices (Taylor & Judson, 2014), there appears little evidence of a strong positive correlation between achieving higher order learning outcomes and student satisfaction with many of today’s undergraduate students (Judson & Taylor, 2014). Our experience has identified some patterns of behaviours that many business students exhibit at the undergraduate level of education associated with this observation.…”