The Perceived Value of Higher Education and University Competitiveness - The Rubik Cube Metaphor

Abstract

Purpose. Over the past two decades, concerned with how stakeholders perceive the value of their services, universities have adopted entrepreneurial orientations and relationship marketing approaches into their activities. The fierce competition on the global higher education market, forced university managers to innovate, to look for new ways to build their offer. Relationship marketing and the knowledge regarding the stakeholders, primarily the students’ perception of their offerings, can provide universities with a competitive advantage. As such, university managers need to carry out satisfaction surveys, inquiries regarding the universities image or the perceived value of the academic programs and services offered, need to plan and organize offline and online integrated marketing communication campaigns. Methodology/Design/Approach. Based on the resemblance of perceived value with a Rubik's cube, university marketers can constantly innovate through the way they match the various dimensions of perceived value or facets of the cube to meet the stakeholders’ expectations. Result /Findings. This research highlights the dimensions of the perceived value of the educational offer and determines the extent to which factors such as the university image, the source of financing the studies and the duration of the student - university relationship have an influence on the perception of value. For this purpose we conducted a quantitative research on a sample of 320 students from the largest faculty from the West University of Timișoara, Romania. To perform the statistical data analysis, the following steps were carried out: (1) the reliability of the measurement scales analysis; (2) the opportunity to perform the factorial analysis verification; (3) the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and (4) the research hypotheses testing. Research results showed that the perceived relational value affects the student’s perceptions on the quality of learning, the usefulness and quality of the acquired knowledge, the employment opportunities. The institutional image has a positive influence on the perceived value of the educational offer. For university or faculty managers, it is important to know how to combine the various facets of the perceived value-technical value, relational value, social value, temporal value- in order to provide the value expected by their stakeholders, primarily by students.