SUPERANDO LA CRISIS: COMUNICACIÓN DE MARKETING SOBRE LA SOSTENIBILIDAD UNIVERSITARIA

Translated title of the contribution: Getting Past the Crisis: Marketing Communication of University Sustainability

Sergio Andrés Osuna Ramírez, Manuela Escobar Sierra

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Higher education institutions (heis), especially during the pandemic crisis, have faced the challenge of designing a sustainable competitive advantage strategy to attract and retain students. However, since constructing a sustainable brand requires successfully building its legiti-macy, sustainability messages must be presented appropriately by using suitable communication channels, such as social networks, that attract younger generations of students and become the only form to communicate with them during the confinement. Hence, this paper investigates if Colombian heis effectively use marketing communication tools to inform their sustainability stra-tegies. For this purpose, a literature review of the terms “university sustainability” and “marketing” was initially conducted, applying a mixed-methods approach. Then, an exploratory analysis with the web scraping technique that considered Facebook® messages posted by five private heis in Me-dellín city (Colombia) was developed during a ten-month period. Finally, an examination approach was applied to summarize data, find hidden relationships, and make predictions through Python programming language. Despite good intentions and reasonable efforts, results indicate that heis do not seem to have a systematic strategy for communicating sustainability issues. Instead, they give the impression of managing sustainability issues mainly from an economic point of view. As a result, universities’ communication of sustainable practices that enhance institutional reputation and increase student retention still appears to be sporadic and insufficient.

Translated title of the contributionGetting Past the Crisis: Marketing Communication of University Sustainability
Original languageSpanish
Pages (from-to)109-122
Number of pages14
JournalInnovar
Volume33
Issue number87
DOIs
StatePublished - 2022

Product types of Minciencias

  • B article - Q3

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Getting Past the Crisis: Marketing Communication of University Sustainability'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this