Sustainable Marketing in Higher Education, Doctoral Dissertation Summary

Abstract

Sustainable marketing, which emerged as the third development phase of green marketing, evolved from the economics of sustainable development. It is defined as a simultaneous balanced approach that incorporates and integrates economic, environmental and social goals, while meeting the needs of all stakeholders and respecting the needs of future generations. Such an approach is considered an obligation, rather than an option, and it represents the focus of this doctoral dissertation. In our post-industrial society, highly-educated human resources and knowledge are the most valuable resources and the key prerequisites for the economic development, prosperity and well-being of each individual and of the society as a whole. Therefore, the traditional role of higher education and its institutions has become more important, and this in turn determines great challenges as these institutions are considered the essence of intellectual, cultural, social and technological development of the community (Meštrović, 2017), the fundamental lever and spitirus movens for sustainable development of the society as a whole. Existing research in the field of sustainable marketing is predominantly focused on forprofit sector, while a further extensive and comprehensive literature review identified the lack of research addressing sustainable marketing in the context of public sector, including the higher education sector and public higher education institutions. In order to address the identified research gap and follow the relevant research recommendations, the basic objectives of this dissertation were defined as follows: (1) to investigate and design a systematic and comprehensive critical account of the existing theoretical knowledge in the field of sustainable marketing, (2) to develop and test a conceptual model aimed at measuring the impact of sustainable marketing in higher education, defined by three dimensions: promotion and education for sustainable development, sustainable marketing activities and implementation benefits, on higher education performance, assessed by service quality and success in achieving the multiple objectives of higher education institution, and (3) to test the proposed hypotheses.

Keywords

• sustainable marketing
• higher education
• public higher education institutions
• performance
• service quality
• pls-sem