Corporate Branding and Higher Education: A Contradiction In Terms?

Author(s):

Louise Spry(presenting / submitting)Marie Parker-Jenkins(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

21. Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

ERG SES C 08, Higher Education

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-09

11:00-12:30

Room:

A-203

Chair:

Geert Thyssen

Contribution

Corporate branding in universities can be utilised to not only clarify a university’s position in the marketplace but to highlight the complexity of multi-faceted features (Chapleo, 2010). This is part of the basic issue for a university to try and communicate what may be a diverse and complex brand to multiple stakeholders (Balmer and Gray , 2003). It may be, for example, that some universities’ understanding of branding may be very different from that of commercial organisations (Chapleo, 2011). Importance is attributed to issues surrounding the management and implementation of corporate branding (Jevons, 2006, Whisman, 2009). Notably, corporate identity needs to be clearly understood (Balmer, 2001; Kantanen, 2012; Herstein et al, 2007) in order to protect institutional reputation. Gutman and Miaoulis (2003) maintain that a positive brand image can be a key driver in influencing a student's decision to attend a particular university. With regard to student retention the more a university’s values fit with those of the students the less likely they are to drop out (Jevons, 2006; Balmer and Liao, 2007). Specifically, personal values are those ‘that underlie important goals of students’ (Gutman and Miaoulis, 2003:106) and which can have a significant impact on the students' relationship with a university (Durvasula et al, 2011).

While some of these issues have been examined in different organisational contexts there is little empirical evidence of their use in the context of an educational setting. The key focus of commercial organisations tends to be that of profit whereas schools and universities often enjoy a charitable status and may not be comfortable with the idea of “corporate branding”. This paper draws on our highly original research on the application of corporate branding to an educational setting at a university in the Republic of Ireland where major challenges are taking place both in Higher Education (HE) and in teacher education. As corporate branding is about positioning a product/service/organisation in the “eyes” of the customer/student (Curtis et al, 2009; Gutman and Miaoulis, 2003) we explored the perspectives of both student and staff members. The research was therefore a 2-stage study. Research questions for stage 1 considered perceptions of University staff, utilising qualitative methods, and asked:

What do employees in a university understand by ‘corporate branding?

How is corporate branding managed and implemented in a university?

Added to this, in stage 2, we obtained the perceptions of students via an electronic survey, the design of which incorporated the SERPVAL model (Lages and Fernandes, 2005), including such questions as:

What branding elements do students perceive as adding value to their University experience?

What values are important to students and are these affected by an overall perception of the University?

Method

Stage 1: Qualitative An insight was gained into perceptions from employees as several theorists stress the importance of understanding and making sense of the world we live in (Saunders et al, 2007, Cohen et al, 2007). A critical case study was developed which drew on ethnographic techniques and primary sourced data within a qualitative paradigm. In-depth interviews were conducted with key university stakeholders comprising several employees in the Department of Education and the Faculty of Education and Social Sciences and those who had an in-depth knowledge of the broader University context. Data was analysed inductively (Saunders et al, Bryman and Bell, 2007) and coding was adapted from Miles and Huberman (1994) revealing 38 codes from which 12 themes emerged. Patterns identified revealed a number of propositions which were augmented for stage 2. Stage 2: Quantitative A survey is currently being undertaken with university students (circa 300BEd). A significant part of the questionnaire was built around the work of Lages and Fernandes (2005) who designed the SERPVAL model for research in a Portuguese commercial sector with a key focus on personal values. The data is yet to be formally analysed but initial analysis have revealed interesting and unexpected results.

Expected Outcomes

Results for stage 1 indicate that there are conflicting forces, including culture, priorities and values, between a university and that of a department. These inconsistencies appear to have been brought about by key demands from different operating environments which are affecting the successful implementation of a corporate brand. This situation is exacerbated by poor internal communications and an apparent lack of understanding as to what corporate branding is by senior managers. Employees are unsure as to what the University is trying to achieve and there appears to be little buy-in. What does appear to be evolving are departmental “sub-brands” and therefore the challenge for the University is how to pull together these disparate departmental brands into a unified and coherent corporate brand (Hatch and Schultz, 2001; Balmer and Gray, 2003). Preliminary analysis from both the qualitative and quantitative elements indicate that there is a misalignment of perspectives held by management, tutors and students which undermine a coherent and comprehensive branding and marketing strategy. This paper utilises these research findings to explore three levels of perceptions of corporate branding in a HE setting.

References

Balmer J M T, Gray E R (2003) Corporate brands: what are they? What of them? European Journal of Marketing, 37, 7/8, 2003 Balmer J M T, Liao M-N (2007) Student corporate brand identification: an exploratory case study. Corporate Communicatons: An International Journal, 12, 4, 356-375. Chapleo, C (2010) What defines “successful” university brands? International Journal of Public Sector Management, 23, 2, 169-183 Chapleo C (2011) Exploring rationales for branding a university: should we be seeking to measure branding in UK universities. Journal of Brand Management, 18, 6, 411-422. Curtis T, Abratt R, Minor W (2009) Corporate brand management in higher education: the case of ERAU. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 18/6, 404-413 De Chernatony L and Cottam S (2006) Internal brand factors driving successful financial services brands. European Journal of Marketing, 40, 5/6, 611-633. Durvasula S, Lysonski S, Madhavi A D (2011) Beyond service attributes: do personal values matter: Journal of Services Marketing, 25/1, 33-46. Gutman J and Miaoulis G (2003) Communicating a quality position in service delivery: an application in higher education. Managing Service Quality, 13, 2, 105-111 Harris F, de Chernatony L (2001) Corporate branding and corporate brand performance, European Marketing Journal, 35 (3/4), 441-456. Hatch M J, Schultz M (2001) Are the strategic stars aligned for your corporate brand? Harvard Business Review, February, pp129-134. Kantanen H (2012) Identity, image and stakeholder dialogue. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 17, 1, 56-72. Lages F L, Fernandes J C (2005) The SERPVAL scale: a multi-item instrument for measuring service personal values. Journal of Business Research, 58, 1562-1572.

Author Information

Louise Spry (presenting / submitting)

Nottingham Trent University

Nottingham

Marie Parker-Jenkins (presenting)

University of Limerick

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