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Higher Education Brand Loyalty

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While brand establishment has always been an important factor in full time admissions, as higher education capacity has grown in recent years, brand building and development has become more important in university marketing plans.

For students in the adult and continuing education segment, the past few years have seen the emergence of national brands such as Walden University and the University of Phoenix. This materialization has put pressure on local and regional universities to differentiate themselves from their newer national counterparts.

Eduventures, an education research and consulting firm, recently created a report called "Understanding the National Online Higher Education Market," which offers a detailed examination of the different challenges institutions face depending on their size, reputation, and location. The report states that "online delivery implies geography is irrelevant, but the truth is not so straightforward. Whether in terms of consumer demand, program positioning or state regulation, geography will become more, not less, important in the online market." Services offered in this area are designed to help address a growing opportunity in the local branding of online education.

As online degree offerings become more abundant, brand development becomes a bigger factor - a scenario that begs the question: Is local the first choice? Locally based schools have an advantage in both awareness and trust, but also potential employment, key factor in choosing a school. Local hiring managers often have degrees from local universities, and that connection continues to be important. As the national brands deliver more graduates, however, this practice will undoubtedly become less common.

While the rapid rise of these national online universities (currently reporting enrollments of about 336,000 students) has helped reach an underserved market, they have crowded the market with more offerings. With an estimated 1.5 million higher education students studying pursuing fully online degrees (a number that has more than tripled in less than five years), the national brands have gained significant market share and will be pushing their brands like never before. Therefore, this increasing competition makes brand development all the more important to local and regional institutions.

For those that scoff at the importance of branding, the University of Phoenix has spent more than $150 million for naming rights to a professional sports team stadium. The Arizona Cardinals of the NFL now play their home games in the University of Phoenix Stadium .(How big is University of Phoenix today - $2.7 billion in annual sales with a market cap (worth) of $13 billion

Phoenix's use of sports aligns with the popularity of the traditional university’s use of intercollegiate sports to build brand. Huge amounts of money are invested in athletics to bring a school into the national limelight. Recent examples in football include Rutgers, Boise State, University of South Florida and University of Hawaii. College basketball examples of brand building include Gonzaga and the swirl of activity around George Mason University in 2006.

Speaking of "swirl", a recent Arizona newspaper article (http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1116swirling1116.html) highlighted the new trend of “swirling,” used to refer to students who transfer two or more times in pursuit of a degree. In extreme cases of swirling, students may be attending more than one school at a time. Swirling is growing increasingly popular-in fact, a recent statistic reports that about 56 percent of students who transfer into ASU each fall have already attended two or more institutions. One ASU transfer student had attended as many as nine schools.

Are these students so swayed by brand that they are lost? Or have the retention efforts of the schools not kept pace with the promises offered in the branding efforts? Moving forward, we will continue to discuss the impact of brand on recruiting and retention on EDUInsight. Please join our discussion by posting your comments in our blog.

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Additional sections of this journal address student recruiting and student retention. We have also placed all articles with a common theme of Innovative Practices in Communicating with Students in a separate portal. New articles will be posted each Monday, please check back by bookmarking this site or placing a link to this online education and distance education programs portal.

Mark Shay is the founder of EDU - a leading academic advertising provider, - part of Halyard Education Partners, a leader in student lead generation and enrollment management services.