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Chadderton, EV, 2024. Leveraging employability ‘halo’ factors in the creation of reputation based brand equity; a novel approach for UK universities. DBA, Nottingham Trent University.
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Abstract
This thesis examines student decision making, focusing on reputation-based brand equity in order to inform the theory and practice of marketing for international student recruitment, in the UK Higher Education sector. Presenting a potential novel model for the building of brand equity by Higher Education institutions, this study looks beyond the opaque factor of ranking and demonstrates the value of adopting an approach to building brand equity which incorporates alternative factors which can be harnessed to build an institution’s reputation and ultimately boost its brand equity.
Examining the relationship and distinction between the concepts of ‘ranking’ and ‘reputation’ this study challenges highlights specifically the demonstrable potential for institutions to leverage, in the absence of a high ranking, employability related halo factors. The resulting halo effect, defined as the process by which a consumer forms a “consistent and statistically significant set of associations with a brand name” (Leuthesser et al, 1995) is presented as a basis for the formation of a reputation, which in turn could be used to drive the establishment of strong, relevant and resonant brand equity which positively influences decision making.
Employing a Critical Realist perspective and a mixed methods approach, the research employs both surveys and semi-structured interviews. By capturing the testimony of prospective students, this study also seeks to counter a previous tendency in the literature towards over reliance on testimony from current or former university students at the “post hoc justification” stage of their decision-making journey (Oplatka 2015, p.267). By addressing and adapting established marketing theory to the international recruitment context, this study achieves the original aim of the DBA process, to contribute to the pursuit of a more strategic, research informed basis for the pursuit of international branding and related recruitment activity.
This study is undertaken in the context of the Chinese market, where prospective students, belonging to a collectivist culture, are widely assumed to be highly sensitive to league table rankings. Challenging these assumptions, the importance of halo factors – aspects of an institutions offer not related directly to rankings - are probed through the research to examine their role in the creation of an institution’s reputation and their importance to the decision-making process.
Although focused on Chinese students and the UK sector, the novel process presented by this thesis offers insights which could potentially be applied to international recruitment markets with similar characteristics and adapted for application by universities in other destination countries. Similarly, this approach could be nuanced to identify a range of potential halo factors pertinent to other major recruitment markets, through which to leverage reputation and brand equity.
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Creators: | Chadderton, E.V. |
| Contributors: | Name Role NTU ID ORCID |
| Date: | March 2024 |
| Rights: | This work is the intellectual property of the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed in the owner(s) of the Intellectual Property Rights. |
| Divisions: | Schools > Nottingham Business School |
| Record created by: | Jeremy Silvester |
| Date Added: | 01 Aug 2025 13:35 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Aug 2025 13:35 |
| URI: | https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/54103 |
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