Customer Centric Marketing Strategy for Universities

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to analyze the ways of using a customer centric approach to develop a marketing strategy for universities. Customer centricity is defined as the university marketing strategy that implies unique intra-disciplinary and interdisciplinary studies, bringing into line individual students’ experiences and capabilities with changing the market place and job opportunities. The main forces that urge higher education institutions to change the core of their marketing strategy are characterized; namely, MOOC development and eliminated geographical barriers that stimulate students’ mobility. Further, four important directions of customer centricity are described, depending on the role the students and other university target audiences play in the process: the customers being the source of sustainable competitive advantage; customers as the source of information for the company; customers as the source of information for other representatives of the target audience; customers as employees and value co-creators. Universities need to revise their marketing mix, implementing consumer-oriented elements and reducing students’ risks and expenses. Students should also be an essential part of the university’s integrated marketing communications as the source of relevant information for target audiences. In addition, the role of students in value co-creation needs significant expansion. Customer-centricity in this case will no longer be limited to the use of individual elements without significant positive effects, but it will ensure obtaining a long-term competitive advantage in the education market. In a world of life-long learners it will not only assist in completing singular transactions with first-year students but also ensure repeated “purchases” among alumni.

Keywords

• customer
• centric
• marketing
• strategy
• university
• management
• sustainable
• competitive
• advantage