The Perception of Employees in the Construction of University Brand: Spanish Context Case Study

Abstract

This research was carried out to examine the role of brand capital in higher education. For this purpose, the main contributions of the literature to the study of brand capital and its application to the education sector were analyzed. Then, the variables determining brand capital in the higher education sector were identified and a comparison between the main employees was made. Once the educational brand capital construct was established, an empirical study was carried out using a valid sample of 1,106 responses (690 from lecturers and 416 from service staff, belonging to eight public and private universities in Valencia (Spain). SPSS v.19 for Windows and EQS 6.2 were used as statistical work tools. The present investigation fills a gap in the marketing discipline because it is considered that there are no current investigations that analyze the perception of the brand capital through the opinions of the main employees involved in Spanish universities. The results obtained show the effects of each variable of brand capital in relation to the determining variables and, especially, to brand awareness, thus, helping the university managers to decipher the key aspects for their employees and thereby generate strategies to maintain them or improve them.