Professional Documents
Culture Documents
INTRODUCTION
Branding means different things to different people, for example to the external
stakeholders, brands seek to distinguish one’s company, product or service from the
competition and create a lasting impression in the company’s prospect's mind. To the
internal stakeholder, powerful brands are meant to increase employee satisfaction, loyalty,
and achievement drive. Whisman (2009) proposes that universities that succeed in their
branding efforts are willing to borrow strategies from the corporate world to get buy-in by
engaging all interested constituents – faculties, staff, students, alumni and others – in the
process. Hemsley-Brown and Oplatka (2006) suggest that universities might need to re-
position themselves in order to attract successive generations of students. Thus brand
management is necessary for higher education institutions.
The image of an entity is the direct result of perception. Perception controls human behaviour
and in turn perception is influenced by, expectations, attitude, motives, learning and others.
People’s perception depends much on what they want to perceive as an actual stimuli. King
and Grace (2007) suggest that as much as branding provides an opportunity to shape
customers' perceptions with respect to the organization, it is an opportunity to shape
employee perceptions as well. Branding is but one aspect of marketing effort. Marketing is
not a battle of products; it's a battle of perceptions. The power of a brand resides in the minds
of customers and it is all about what they learned, felt, saw, thought and heard about the
brand as a result of their experiences over time.
A university brand should represent the relationship the institution has with its employees
(internal customers) and the relationship that it has with its students (external customers).
This relationship is based on trust and commitment with satisfaction as a resultant factor.
Russel (2005) suggests that out that satisfaction is linked to customer loyalty and relationship
commitment. Highly satisfied customers spread positive word-of-mouth which in turn
spreads positive ideas about the brand in question. Achieving satisfaction provides a key
competitive advantage for higher education institution since satisfaction is one of the main
determinants of perception. The way employees treat students and other external stakeholders
influence their perception of the corporate brand (Whelan et al 2009). The brand’s successful
positioning depends on the careful attention shown to the role that the staff plays in
producing and delivering the service. Management support is considered to be the single
most important component in guiding employee behaviour (King and Grace 2007). The
researcher proposes that the success of the university service as a brand depends on carefully
nurtured relationships between management, staff and students. These relationships may
manifest themselves through the perception of each group towards the institution’s image,
identity and reputation. Russel (2005) cautions that higher educational institutions need to
maintain or develop a distinct image to create a competitive advantage in an increasingly
competitive market. She argues that an institution’s actual quality is seen as often being less
important than its prestige, or reputation for quality, because it is the university’s perceived
excellence which, in fact, guide the decisions of prospective students and scholars
considering offers. She suggests that the main focus of attention should be on the customers
perceived service quality in order to assist in differentiation.
1.2. Contextual setting
In the apartheid era, HDSAUs served the coloureds and blacks and form a majority of
South Africa’s universities. Financial resources for these institutions were inequitable and
the range of programmes offered reflected assumptions about the kind of careers for which
students of different races were being prepared. The research in these institutions was not
uniformly supported across the higher education sector (CHE 2010). Post apartheid
transformations whose aim was to bring about equity and equality in South African
universities resulted in mergers and incorporations of some of them. The new conception
gave rise to new brands of universities, with the public generally having greater
expectations from them.
Raju (2004) notes that there was significant commitment on the part of the state in
redressing apartheid inequalities after independence. He argues that what emerged was a
“deregulated ‘free market’ in higher education” resulting in widening gaps in higher
education. He further argues the while historically advantaged white universities and
technikons consolidated their positions as leading higher education institutions in the
country, historically disadvantaged black institutions were plagued by crises and were
losing students in massive numbers. Hay and Gensen (2008) and Subotzky (1997) also note
that inequality was experienced by HDSAUs as opposed to Historically Advantaged South
African Universities (HASAUs). Harman and Harman (2008) argue that within higher
education, mergers have been used to combine academic departments or faculties but more
importantly, they have been used to combine one or more institutions in order to create new
entities. They add that while most institutional mergers have caused major disruption and
often cause considerable controversy, at the same time, many have achieved positive
outcomes, especially in terms of building larger and more comprehensive institutions and
increasing the range and quality of academic programmes . They have also made education
as a public good, more accessible.
MacGregor (2010) notes that there are three clusters among the South African universities:
The first cluster has five intensive research universities- Cape Town, Pretoria,
Rhodes, Stellenbosch and Witwatersrand- all formerly white universities produced bulk
postgraduates, had high student graduation rates, high research outputs, and high
proportion of academics with PhDs, high income and low staff-student ratios.
The second has nine universities- Free State, Kwazulu-Natal, North West, Fort
Hare, Limpopo, Western Cape, Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan and Zululand-
whose performance in terms of research, student success rates, postgraduates and staff
qualifications declined following the mergers with Historically Disadvantaged Institutions.
The last cluster comprises of eight institutions- two rural historically disadvantaged
universities (Venda, Vaal) and six universities of technology (Cape University of
Technology, Central University of Technology, Durban University of Technology,
Mangosuthu University of Technology, Tshwane University of Technology and Vaal
University of Technology).
These ones experience less achievements in post graduate enrolments, in the
success and graduation rates, lower qualified staff and research outputs as well as high
staff-student ratio but high enrolment in science and engineering.
Letseka and Maile (2008) argue that despite independence over one and a half decades ago,
students’ and employees preference for the HASAUs has been higher than that for
HDSAUs. It is against this background that the researcher Can this perception be positively
enhanced in order that the institutions achieve competitive advantage through re-branding?
Extensive literature has been reviewed to identify earlier academics and researchers
views on what constitutes brand management and the practices adapted by higher
learning institutions. Also reviewed is the concept of perception and how it influences
brand management in the university context.
People’s perception depends much on what they want to perceive as an actual stimuli and it
is influenced by attitude, learning motives and the environment in which people find
themselves, among other factors. What is critical is how the stakeholders view the
institution as a brand by employing all the five human senses. Boone and Kurtz (2005)
explain that a person’s perception of an object or event results from stimulus and individual
factors. The latter are sensory processes and experiences with similar inputs and basic
motivations and expectations. De Chernatony (2010) purports that brands are intangible
assets and because of their ethereal nature, interpretations of a firm’s brand can vary
between members of the management team. This could also happen to the other employees
of the firm. Harris (2009) argues that consumers react and respond to a brand
particularly where values and beliefs are embedded as is the case of higher education. He
adds that institutions (and their brands) and consumers are both active agents negotiating
with one another and that this varied and changing relationship between higher education
and consumers can be mediated through the use of branding strategies. It is also true that
HDSAUs can positively enhance their relationship with their current and prospective
students and employees through branding.
King and Grace (2007) note that as much as branding provides an opportunity to shape
customers' perceptions with respect to the organization, it is an opportunity to shape
employee perceptions as well. Strong brands are a direct product of strong positive
customer perceptions. Universities are meant to advance the public good and they usually
operate under regulations of the government of the day because they are partly supported
by the state. Lowrie (2007) argues that the branding of higher education sits within the
broader context of government policy and commissioned reports. Kay (2004) argues that
strong brands create a logic meaning, they form representations that channel perceptions
and that these logics are subject to change as customers learn new behaviours by adapting
new technologies or due to other innovations. Kay (2004) purports that brand strength is a
matter of consumer perception, therefore the main concern for university management
should be how to make the brand favourable in the minds of the stakeholders especially the
students and employees. Therefore, for the management of HDSAUs to effectively and
efficiently nurture and sustain their brands, they have to design them in such a way that
they appeal to the students and employees as their direct stakeholders, since perception
shapes behaviour.
Universities operate outside the boundaries of conventional businesses since they are
relatively new to systematic and complex branding endeavors. Not-for-profit and public
sectors have continually borrowed from the business-business sector in order to market
their services. As such, services branding remains a relatively underdeveloped field, which
needs a lot of research activity. Whelan S. et al (2009) note that the application of
marketing concepts to public sector organizations is still relatively new for researchers and
marketing of many public services may inevitably be different from that in the private
sector. Similarly, Curtis, Abratt and Minor (2009) suggest that organizations are struggling
to formulate and implement their corporate brand strategies. When a brand is mentioned,
very few people would focus on a university as a brand without serious considerations. Hay
and Gensen (2008) argue that branding in South Africa has, until recently, not been an area
of priority because the country had always operated in a protected, regulated market with a
steady income. This argument calls for more research in the field of higher education.
Hemsley-Brown and Oplatka (2006) note that the research field of higher education
marketing is still at a relatively pioneer stage with much research still to be carried out both
from a problem identification and strategic perspective. They feel that branding has barely
made a mark in higher education marketing literature. Jevons (2006) and Maringe (2005)
conclude that branding higher education institutions is complex and that conventional
brand management techniques are inadequate to be applied to the service sector since they
were borrowed from the business sector. Hemsley-Brown and Oplatka (2006) point out
that, the literature on higher education marketing is incoherent, even inchoate, and lacks
theoretical models that reflect upon the particular context of higher education and the
nature of their services. Hay and Gensen (2008) argue that in South Africa there is the need
for more scientific approaches towards the branding of higher education. This is
necessitated by a number of realities, such as a history plagued by inequalities, new
policies directed to eradicated the very inequalities, private high education, increased
diversity in types of institutions, the various on going transformations in the higher
education sector, among other factors.
Despite the rapid growth in the study of branding in the service sector, there is little
empirical literature in the field of branding of higher education institutions in general and
of HDSAUs in particular. Below are some of the brand management practices that
HDSAUs can adopt to help them attain competitive advantage.
Another model was developed by Hay and Gensen (2008). The model is devised for
branding higher education institutions in South Africa and it describes some internal
practices that have impact on branding and on institutions’ overall reputation and image.
Hatch and Schultz (2003) also propose a model that suggests an approach that is
organizationally integrated and cross functional, involving all corporation into the
corporate branding.
O’cass and Debra (2003) argue that the branding models have been developed lack
empirical testing and are derived from brand practitioners’ rather than consumers’
perspective. The further argue that these models pay little attention to the branding of
services and remain inconsistent in their terminology.
The increase in competition for quality students and staff places greater emphasis on the
importance of corporate branding in higher education institutions. This is the kind of
scenario that HDSAUs are faced with. They lose almost all quality student and staff to
HASAUs. Boyle (2007) purports that the brand process originated as a means by which a
firm could differentiate its goods and services from those of the competitor, and that it also
acted as a promise of consistency and quality for consumers. When universities are
branding or re-branding they are determining their position in the minds of their current
and potential students and employees in relation to other universities. Lowrie (2007)
argues that a particular group’s identity cannot assert itself without distinguishing its
identity from a context of other identities. University management has to be careful when
creating and maintaining brand, because branding can be a double edged sword, it builds
and it destroys, depending on how well it is conceived and implemented. Knox (2000)
asserts that critical differentiation has traditionally been achieved through the development
of unique selling proposition [USP] -a slogan or tagline, which he argues to be the single
most important component of modern branding practice.
All HDSAUs have applied the traditional marketing mix tools. However, application is one
thing and having them to form positive meaning to the stakeholders is a different thing
altogether. There is need for strong initiative to have meaningful application of the
marketing mix variables.
4. Conclusion
Developing or improving a university brand implies communicating corporate identity in
order to promote preference and loyalty for that university. A lot of effort has been made to
raise the status and perception of the public towards HDSAUs. The government for
example, initiated restructuring higher education institutions to help bring about equity and
equality between the HDSAUs and the HASAUs through mergers and incorporations.
Similarly, the government increased funding for the HDSAUs (CHE 2010; Subotzky
1997). The restructuring of South African higher education has been affected by growing
globalisation of higher education, the commodification of education and the marketisation
of higher education provision. Other factors include pressures for relevance and
accountability in teaching and research, the application to the higher education sector of
management approaches developed in the corporate sector, and significant increases in the
numbers of students (CHE 2010).
In order that HDSAUs are positively perceived, they have to work on their brand image.
However, currently their image remains decimal and they continue to lag behind the
HASAUs. How can they re-position themselves through branding, to effectively and
efficiently assume these roles? One of the goals of higher education is to promote and
develop social responsibility and awareness amongst students, enabling higher education to
contribute to socio- economic development through community service programmes (CHE
2009). HDSAUs have to contribute toward the achievements of the state as Pityana (2010)
argues that, South Africa will get to a point where historically black universities will
advance black people as rightful heirs of the intellectual heritage of the country. Badat
(2007) also argues that South Africa Higher Education shows much promise with respect to
knowledge production and dissemination, to contributing to social equity, socio-economic
development and democracy, and to the development needs of the Southern African region
and the African continent. A strong South African economy could become the engine of
growth, which powers other countries, especially in Southern Africa (Cook-Mohajane
2009).
These arguments point to the fact that HDSAUs have not been fully prepared for the
complex roles they have to play in as far as their brand maintenance is concerned. The
current research argues that well coordinated brand management policies and practices will
positively enhance the perception of the main stakeholders towards the institutions. Alves
and Raposo (2010) suggest that effective management of image can help colleges to
formulate results-oriented communications to constituencies, particularly prospective
students, acquire a more competitive market position and enhance their competitive stature.
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