Browsing by Author "Serajzahedi, Armita"
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- Towards a holistic higher education brandingPublication . Serajzahedi, Armita; Valle, Patrícia Oom do; Naeini, Hasan SadeghiHigher education branding (HEB) has recently been in focus as an important solution in differentiating and communicating the competitive advantage of universities. In general, educational services include several factors that can be examined in the marketing and branding of higher education at different stages of the educational experience. Although the results of branding in higher education and its outcomes for universities are well documented from different perspectives, research is still lacking to develop a comprehensive approach to all the factors influencing the HEB process, specially from a service approach. In this regard, this thesis presents three studies with the aim of examining the effective factors of branding in the higher education sector as providers of special services and particular experiences for students. The first study provides an overview of HEB following a service design approach to find significant gaps and deficiencies in the literature. The second study offers a valuable contribution to the understanding of HEB through presenting a holistic conceptual model which supports the nature of educational experiences and services, providing an integrated approach to the branding process. Subsequently, the third study contributes to refine and validate the proposed scale to measure the dimensions and subdimensions of the HEB model through a two-stage study using data collected from fresh alumni and students of six universities from two countries, Iran and Portugal. Overall, the results corroborate the importance of HEB dimensions, and statistically significant evidence in the data analysis indicates that the main concepts are significantly associated with the construct and the HEB model is valid. Therefore, the proposed model can be used in the process of measuring the success and strength of the higher education brand in different stages (pre-experience, experience, post-experience) of educational services.