Citation:
Dennis C, Papagiannidis S, Alamanos E, Bourlakis M. (2017) The role of brand attachment and its antecedents in brand equity in Higher Education: an extended abstract. In. Creating Marketing Magic and Innovative Future Marketing Trends: Proceedings of the 2016 Academy of Marketing Science, (AMS) Annual Conference, pp. 287-292
Abstract:
In an increasingly competitive higher education sector, universities face significant challenges
when it comes to recruiting new students. Recruitment is only the beginning of a long-term
relationship that higher education institutions (HEI) need to cultivate, not only while students
attend the programs, but also beyond graduation. Previous studies highlight the need for
research in relation to the power that comes from successful branding and the implications for
HEIs (Dholakia and Acciardo 2014). This paper aims to contribute to an underdeveloped area in
the literature related to brand attributes and their importance in the context of the higher
education sector (Chapleo 2010). Specifically, the research objective is to examine the influence
of HEIs’ brand identity, brand meaning, and brand image on brand equity as a result of forming
strong attachment, commitment, trust and overall satisfaction from the vantage points of
students and graduates; representing major research gaps identified in contemporary
literature. Specifically, the first main aim of this work is to investigate whether universities’
positioning strategies should continue focusing on building prestige or whether strategies
aimed at improving student satisfaction could have more positive effects on brand equity. The
second aim of this work is to examine whether the perceived by the students brand equity of
an institution is different for students and graduates. The third main aim of the paper is to
examine the relationship between attachment strength and satisfaction.