The Case Of Chinese Higher Education

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Throughout the period of reform and opening, the Chinese higher education has been experiencing transformation (Shi Li & Chunbing Xing, 2010).Since the Chinese Education Institution implemented the open-up policy at the beginning of the reform and opening process, which keep increasing the scale of higher education by recruiting much more the college/university students (Shi Li & Chunbing Xing, 2010). This is a widely accepted present situation that higher education is being internationalization like business generally (Healey, 2008). According to the Healey (2008) stated that there are two characteristics to illustrate the conception of internationalization higher education. Oone is that the higher education should input the different significance resources from the other countries; the second is that higher education output personality characteristics and competitive education resource to the international society (Wilen-Daugenti, Grace & Mckee, 2008). Nowadays, the Chinese higher education is an important output sector. It means not only set students to study in the foreign college/universities but also attract foreign students from the world. At the same time, there are a large number of colleges/universities competing for the worldwide students. This purpose is not only for the new colleges/universities to build but also existing colleges/universities want to expand. Colleges/universities increase financial investment both to attract more foreign students and create opportunities for students to broad (Wilen-Daugenti, Grace & Mckee, 2008).

In the face of the fierce competition environment around the world, colleges/universities have begun a search for a unique definition to characterize themselves differently both in attracting students and academic construction in further. Therefore, the branding used to attract national students will not cut when the overseas recruitment (Wæraas & Solbakk, 2008). If the colleges/universities want to achieve the effective of attracting more foreigners, the university should be pay more attention to the branding. Because the brands are everywhere, and it has importance to make marketing success is undisputable (Caldwell & Freire, 2004). Brand is an idea to make marking in the different kinds of constituents’ minds, such as customers, employees, etc.

Nowadays, higher education fields, especially college and university should comprehensive consider the two principles of branding (differentiation and integration) to make sure their positions in the fierce competitive education markets (Herr, 2000).

However, developing university need to have to find the appropriate brand marketing strategy and branding management that would search the challenge from international market for branding university all over the world (Hemsley-Brown & Oplatka, 2006).

Based on these theories, the framework of this study intends to cover the literature concerning about Branding and Chinese higher Education to analysis the educational experience to help universities differentiate and build unique brands so that the recruitment will be having a better consequence.

1.2 Problem discussion

Park et.al (1986) has been researched the brand of university impacts on their brand image，which he obtains a result that the university brand image is not only provided with the functional attributes but also possess the affective and symbolic attribute. And then, there are two issues to influencing the recruitment rate of foreigner to input for Chinese high education. As followed: The school brands lack of attraction to the foreign students. Compared with developed countries, the overall level of China’s higher education is not well-known except a few famous universities like Peking University, Tsinghua University. Most Chinese universities are lack of branding force in the international higher education market, which directly lead to the mainland universities without any attractive for the foreign students in international markets. Students output and input existing the problem of serious "deficit".

At the same time, due to the Chinese universities lack of publicity or even loss, the foreign students are general short of understanding the Chinese universities. When they apply for the university, firstly choose the first-class university they heard like Tsinghua University and Peking University. What is more, the criterion of China recruitment is relatively low for the foreign students in mainland China. Therefore, every student would not to give up the chance to apply for first-class universities in the similar to the recruit foreign students conditions.

The university need to pay more attention to the tangible property (the university function) and intangible property (the university reputation) for shaping the well brand image (Park, Jaworski & Maclnnis, 1986). The definition is what the university branding want to represent and embrace all tangible and intangible elements, let the branding unique and personality (Dooley, R., 2012).

In totally, our thesis focuses on branding to express the significance of the Chinese higher education, it is the lens through which they attract the foreign students to view their high teaching quality, personality courses, and standard management. Many colleges/universities have been competing distinctive by created branding. Actually, branding is itself existing not created and it’s just to define and express them (Dooley, R., 2012). Here branding higher education is how our aim to suggest the Chinese general universities to achieve the competence of attracting more and higher quality foreign students.

1.3 Purpose

Nowadays, environment among the Chinese higher education is competitive, different Chinese universities use the different branding ways to attract foreign students to study in their universities. This thesis is trying to analyze the branding using in the different universities which are the proper ways to attract foreign students and take more market share. In details, the university should try to keep high brand reputation, and make effective brand be known by all over the world, in order to attract more foreign students.

1.4 Research Question

With the background and problem discussion given above, our article will focus on the following research question to justify the literature and intend to mention appropriate suggestions:

How can the Chinese college/university use branding to attract more foreign students?

1.5Delimitation

Many other factors than the political parties’ foreign policy influence their support in a country, but for the simplicity this paper will mainly concentrate on Taiwan’s policy regarding its relations with China. In that way, it will be easier to clearly see how the public opinion influences the cross-strait relation.

Worth to mention is also that the former President Chen Shui-bian has been detained for corruption, which indeed has an effect on the public opinion about him. In order to not let this fact affect people’s opinion about his party I will bear this in mind and be careful when asking about him.

Ma Ying-jeou on the other hand is said to be a weak president, making people doubt whether he is suitable as a president or not. This does affect his support in the country. Even if people agree with him and his party when it comes to his Mainland China foreign policy, people will choose to not vote for him. This is also important to keep in mind while interviewing people, since this will affect the results when asking them whether they support former President Chen or current President Ma.

Delimitation would also be that in different parts of Taiwan differentiate in their opinion, and since I am only here in Taipei I have no chance of interviewing people from the Southern part of Taiwan that is said to be strongly against China. In order to make my study as truthful as possible I will also use information gathered from some course literatures and studies provided by among others National Chengchi University in Taiwan.

The limited literature on the branding of universities internationally focuses on surveying international students — gathering their perceptions on a variety of marketing activities conducted in the recruitment of international students, and subsequently determining their effectiveness.  On the demand side, a considerable number of papers focus on the choice factors of the student–consumer (Baldwin and James, 2000, Umashankar, 2001,Pugsley and Coffey, 2002 and Binsardi and Ekwulugo, 2003).

seek to identify key factors in the choice of higher education with some research on student choice in international markets (e.g., Gomes and Murphy, 2003).  可以换个对象去整理 不是找出重点影响因素 而是侧重在学校对品牌的认识，

根据上海市教委日前发布的教育国际化工程"十二五"（2011－2015年）行动计划，未来上海将探索中外合作办学新机制、大力发展来华留学生教育、多渠道支持师生出国学习培训。计划到"十二五"末，在沪外国留学生人数达到7万。

　　据悉，到2020年，上海的中外合作机构和项目总量争取达到400个左右。为此，上海将进一步推动中外合作办学的高质量发展，包括继续推动上海纽约大学建设。积极鼓励高校创造条件，再吸引若干所国外高校（含高职）来上海合作举办独立设置的高等教育机构。

　　此外，上海还鼓励优质高中与国外知名高中和教育集团合作，设立1到2所独立设置的中外融合的合作高中，招收本国学生和外国学生，融合本土课程和国际课程，增强学生的国际理解、国际交往与国际竞争能力，满足市民、海归人员和外籍人员子女对优质高中教育的需求。

　　上海将吸引更多外国学生来沪留学。到"十二五"末，留学生人数达到7万。其中学历生2.5万，长期生数近5万。

　　上海还将建立外国留学生预科教育基地，为市政府奖学金生和其他有需要的留学生新生提供汉语和基础知识的强化培训，以及学习方法和研究方法等基本技能的辅导，帮助留学生顺利度过最初的适应期，提高其学业成功的可能性。

据统计，2011年度，共有来自180个国家和地区的4.7万多名外国留学生在上海高校和科研机构就读。

This gap in the literature is certainly an associated area of research for the future. It was clearly necessary to reach a good working definition of a successful brand for this research but the whole subject area of "success" among brands is an area of academic research in its own right, and certainly in the university context one that is little explored – if a purpose of academic research may be to throw up new areas to question as well as try to answer existing ones, then "what do universities precisely seek to achieve through branding" fulfils the former

Purpose http://www.emeraldinsight.com/promo/pdf/global/brand_equity_in_higher.pdf

2. Theoretical Consideration

2.1 Brand

2.1.1 Definitions

In general, Brand is a name, term, design or symbol, in order to make the some production or service to be identified and distinguish with competitors’ production or service by consumer (Aaker D.A., 1996). Branding is the marketing approach of attracting more customers to increase value, image, and prestige, etc. By using a successful brand, consumers can strength a positive image (Ginden, 1993, Ginden, R. (1993). The name game. Cheers, 59-62.). Brands can guide the consumer know about the products anything when they buy (Montgomery and Wernerfelt, 1992 Montgomery, Cynthia A., and Birger

Wernerfelt, "Risk Reduction and Umbrella Branding," Journal of Business, January 1992.65,31-50.).

From those definitions, these are the essentially part of the branding in order to their products’ image and good reputation （Chris Chapleo, (2010),"What defines "successful" university brands?", International Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. 23 Iss: 2 pp. 169 – 183）as well as branding the products will influence the customer’s preference. Furthermore, the brand image will improve the products value and loyalty of the customer (The Economist, 1988 The Economist (1988), Vol.16 January: 3–26.).

The brand is valuable (brand value) that means the image of the total views from the customers， which includes the quality of products and service, financial performance, consumer loyalty and satisfaction, The overall evaluation of the brand, market share, the influence of customers, brand awareness, brand endurance, etc. And brand value also means the actual financial, the benefit effect of using the brand (Kapferer, 1997 KAPFERER, JEAN-NOËL (1997), Strategic Brand Management, Great Britain, Kogan Page.).

2.1.2 University brand

The scholars and researchers suggested that the connotation and basic characteristics of higher education brand have the different kinds of discussion and summary:

Some article focus on the basic characteristics of university brand. Generally, they think that the brand has some notable features, namely all kinds of best talents' person, the first level of teaching condition, the leading level of the scientific research, higher social service quality, the superiority of material conditions, the creative campus culture, and advancement, characteristics, sustainability, etc.（McAlexander , J . H . , Schouten , J . W . and Koenig , H .F, ( 2001 ) , " Building brand community , " Journal of Marketing , 66 , 1 , pp. 38 – 54 .Muniz , A . and O ’ Guinn , T .C. ( 2001 ) , " Brand community , " Journal of Consumer Research , 27 ,4 , 412 – 432 .）

The others articles suggest the higher education brand should be focus on the reality of the composition. For instance，education brand is the mark of the university/college name. (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J050v08n02_05) Education brand is the formation of visibility and reputation with the process of the long-term development (http://www.theknowledgepartnership.com/uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Reputation-Management-for-Education-2009.pdf), which regards the forms of university name as intangible assets, such like public proved general impression and evaluation, and the degree of satisfaction. (Baum, 1990). Baum, H. (1990), "Shock treatment needed to revive brands in the ‘90s", Marketing News,Vol. 24, p. 12.

At present, with the fiercer competition in the higher education market, the Chinese universities need to enhance the competitive ability. (Williams et al., 1997; Williams, G. (1997), "The market route to mass higher education: British experience 1979-1996",Higher Education Policy, Vol. 10 Nos 3/4, pp. 275-89.; Mok, K.H. (1999), "Education and the market place in Hong Kong and Mainland China", Higher Education, Vol. 37 No. 2, pp. 133-58.), Therefore, high education should make the Chinese university brand to enhance their competitiveness in the education markets.( Mok , 2000 Mok, K.H. (2000), "Marketising higher education in post-Mao China", International Journal of Educational Development, Vol. 20, pp. 109-26.)

University brand has been an extensive examination of education as a specific services marketing(Tim Mazzarol ,Critical success factors for international education marketing International Journal of Educational Management 12/4 [1998] 163–175), such as the brand marketing of course services and social services, etc. (Maha Mourad, Christine Ennew and Wael Kortam, Brand equity in higher education, Marketing Intelligence & Planning Vol. 29 No. 4, 2011,pp. 403-420 ( Robert Underwood, Edward Bond and Robert Baer, Building Service Brands via Social Identity: Lessons from the Sports Marketplace, Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice ,Vol. 9, No. 1 (Winter, 2001), pp. 1-13) It is not only the core competitiveness of the external performance but also is a kind of management philosophy to accumulate, acquire and allocate the higher education resources.( Owlia and Aspinwall’s (1996); Waugh’s (2001) http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/33264/InTech-Challenges_for_quality_management_in_higher_education_investigating_institutional_leadership_culture_and_performance.pdf

Essentially, university brand is the comprehensive recognition degree of the university in the society, such as teaching ideas, characteristic, quality and social service. (Ramsden, P. (1999). Learning to lead in higher education. London: Routledge.)

University brand has various value and effect, such like the characteristics of diversification, high quality, uniqueness, high level, and the education market identity.( Waeraas,A. and Solbakk,M. (2009). "Defining the essence of a university: lesson from higher education branding Higher Education, Vol 57(4):449-462).

2.2 brand constitutes

Philip Kotler (1999)( Kotler on Marketing: How to Create, Win, and Dominate Markets ,Simon and Schuster, 1999 book) think the branding contains the six aspects in the content of the many sided at least: Attribute, that is the most essential characteristics to distinguish from other brand name products, namely including the function of brand, quality and price, etc; Benefit, that could help the consumers to solve the problem and also bring the profit from the branding products; Value, that is the value of brand for the customers; Culture, the brand is the cultural connotation; Personality, brand is the personality characteristics; The user, the brand suggests the categories of consumers to purchase or use the products.

However, it is complicated about the brand constitutes that have different kinds of the brands. It always regards the branding as a system including the three dimensional syntheses. They are namely the elements of products (such as the usage value, price and packaging, etc.); the elements of the services or their image (such as pattern, color, advertising, culture, etc.); the elements of consumer’s psychical behavior (such as the enterprise’s products or services of cognition, feelings, attitudes, etc).( George Rossolatos，2012，Towards a semiotics of brand equity: Brand coherence and communicative consistency through structuralist operations and rhetorical transformations， IASS-AISS http://iassais.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/book-towards-a-semiotics-of-brand-equity-brand-coherence)

In conclusion, this definition was conducted by survey available literature and arrived at applying it to the especially areas, such as universities. However, other viewpoints turn out apparently, which some university branding may have an unclear purpose (Bunzel, 2007 Brunzel, D.L. (2007), "Universities sell their brands", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 152-3.) . Therefore, the university should seek to empirically establish what constitutes "branding success". (Maha Mourad,Christine Ennew and Wael Kortam,2010, Brand equity in higher education, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 29 No. 4, 2011, pp. 403-420)

2.3 The elements of the university brand （简介要说一下这个部分的创新性）http://www.emeraldinsight.com/promo/pdf/global/brand_equity_in_higher.pdf

http://www.isrj.net/UploadedData/721.pdf （model 用的上）

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/promo/pdf/global/brand_equity_in_higher.pdf

In addition, there are some factors that direct impact quality of university brand (Kurz et al., 2008). Many universities want to improve their competence in the High Education market that should deal with appropriate branding strategy (Brunzel, 2007).

Generally, as noted by Harris and De Chernatony (2001), there is a shift in the branding literature from the consumers’ perceptions and distinctiveness of the brand(Kapferer, 1997, KAPFERER, JEAN-NOËL (1997), Strategic Brand Management, Great Britain, Kogan Page.). In this thesis will be used the types of brand knowledge to analysis the attractive factors of recruiting foreign students in high education/University, namely the brand unique , the brand attitude， the brand identified, and the brand image.

It is also apparent that there is relatively little research that focuses on the service sector.The following section synthesizes existing research to develop a brand factors framework which is then tested in a service sector context.

2.3.1 Creating Brand uniqueness in University

The brand is like a tool of creating distinctiveness for the consumer differentiation needs in the process of choosing the products. (Gabbott and Hogg, 1998, Gabbott, M. and Hogg, G. (1998), Consumers and Services, Wiley, Chicester.)

Implementing standardized or adapted brand strategy, which depends on most universities are expected, because of the universities want to attract overseas students to their campuses. For instance, the core curriculums offering consistent across the higher education markets, as well as some components of the recruiting standard including scholarships, entry demands and cross-crediting of previous education should be adapted to various target markets. ( Brendan J. Gray, Kim Shyan Fam, Violeta A. Llanes, 2003, "Branding universities in Asian markets", Journal of Product & Brand Management, VOL.12 NO.2,pp.108-120.)

Apparently higher education branding needs unique and creativities constantly.( Greenwald, A. G., Banaji, M. R., Rudman, L. A., Farnham, S. D., Nosek, B. A., and Mellot, D. S. (2002), A unified theory of implicit attitudes, stereotypes, self-esteem, and self-concept. Psychological Review, 109 (1), 3-25. ) The unique feature is the part and parcel of university brands, so the university/ high education should be develop their unique feature which pay more attention on the educating of the students’ innovation spirit and practice ability.( Derek C. Bok, Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education, Princeton University Press, 2004-11-15 )

http://file.lw23.com/e/e3/e37/e37f69ba-e074-40bb-9ea9-5c28cf1ea722.pdf

2.3.2 Developing Brand Attributes in University http://www.emeraldinsight.com/promo/pdf/global/brand_equity_in_higher.pdf

Brand Attributes would show brand characteristics. （Global Marketing and Advertising: Understanding Cultural Paradoxes；Marieke K. De Mooij；SAGE Publications, 1998）It represent the basic properties of the brand and emphasize the physical and personality aspects of the brand. Attributes could developed images, actions, or suppose. And then, the brand attributes help creat brand identity. Brand preferences are link to particular brand attributes and influenced by customers’ values.（Brand Management: A Systems Approach For Brand Antecedents And Consequence,，P.Selvaraj，Indian Streams Reserach Journ，Vol.2,Issue.I/Feb; 12pp.1-4）

Using the approach by Vorhies (1997)suggested（Vorhies, D.W. (1997), "Building strong brands", Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science,Vol. 25 No. 3, pp. 260-1.）, brand attributes should categorized under several determents of distinct headings, namely consumer attribute, Provider attributes, Product attributes and Symbolic attributes:

Consumer attributes. This brand will be link to the consumers’ characteristics and experience. In the context of higher education markets, these attributes in terms of factors represent student-related, namely record of formal schooling, motivations, professional interest, etc. (Keller, 1993Keller, K. (1993), "Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity",Journal of Marketing, Vol. 57, pp. 1-22.; Lockwood and Hadd, 2007Lovelock, C. (1991), Services Marketing, Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.).

Provider attributes. The attributes represent the organization, the staff in the university by providing the service and other attributes such as place/location (Booth, 1999Booth, J. (1999), "Choosing a place of higher education: some preliminary analysis of student response to marketing efforts", Academy of Marketing Annual Conference Proceedings, University of Stirling, Scotland, UK, 7-9 July; Scott, 2000Scott, M.B. (2000), "Adolescent pupil decision making: marketing schools/colleges to potential alevel students in new millennium", paper presented at the Academy of Marketing Annual Conference, University of Derby, Derby, 5-7 July.; Chen, 2008 Chen, L.-H. (2008), "Internationalization or international marketing? Two frameworks forunderstanding international students’ choice of Canadian universities", Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 1-33.; Kurz et al., 2008Kurz, K., Scannell, J. and Veeder, S. (2008), "Willingness to pay: making the best case for institutional value and return on investment", University Business, Vol. 11 No. 5, pp. 31-2.), origin, size of university in the country (Cheng and Tam, 1997 Cheng, Y.C. and Tam, W.M. (1997), "Multimodels of quality in education", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 5 No. 1.; Kent et al., 1993 Kent, W.E., Lian, K., Khan, M. and Anene, J. (1993), "Colleges’ hospitality programs: perceived quality", Cornell Hotel & Restaurant Administration Quarterly, Vol. 34 No. 6, pp. 90-7.; Scott, 2000 Scott, M.B. (2000), "Adolescent pupil decision making: marketing schools/colleges to potential a level students in new millennium", paper presented at the Academy of Marketing Annual Conference, University of Derby, Derby, 5-7 July.; Smith and Ennew, 2000 Smith, R. and Ennew, C. (2000), "Service quality and its impact on word of mouth communication in higher education", paper presented at the Academy of Marketing Annual Conference, University of Derby, Derby, 5-7 July.) and history of university. So in the context of university, these attributes include the relationship between students and the faculty (Scott, 2000; Chen, 2008).

Product attributes. These attributes acknowledge the power of quality in the education service (Cheng and Tam, 1997 Cheng, Y.C. and Tam, W.M. (1997), "Multimodels of quality in education", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 5 No. 1.; Kent et al., 1993; Scott, 2000; Smith and Ennew, 2000 Smith, R. and Ennew, C. (2000), "Service quality and its impact on word of mouth communication in higher education", paper presented at the Academy of Marketing Annual Conference, University of Derby, Derby, 5-7 July.; Kurz et al., 2008; Chen, 2008), such tuition fees (Booth, 1999; Keller, 1993; Chen, 2008), and guarantees and after sales service (Vorhies, 1997; Kent et al., 1993). Their factors could be availability or not, in terms of the courses arrangement, admission standardization, tuition fees, etc.

Symbolic attributes. This represents the university total image and reputation (Byron, 1995 Byron, S. (1995), "Brand equity and market-based assets of professional service firms", Journal of Professional Services Marketing, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 3-7.; Cheng and Tam, 1997;Brand equity in higher education 407Keller, 1993; Kent et al., 1993; Scott t, 2000; Smith and Ennew, 2000; Chen, 2008;Temple, 2006 Temple, P. (2006), "Branding higher education: illusion or reality?", Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 15-19.). And this type will illustrate in the next chapter "Brand Image", because that will have a strong link with symbolic attributes to show the importance of the university brands.

2.3.3 Brand identity

Due to brand have the unique feature, the brand brought identity naturally. Brand identity is the noticeable elements (logo, symbol) that recognize and distinguish a brand and then make a top ranking in target audience mind. It is a crucial means to grow your company’s brand.（Doyle, P., "Brand Equity and the Marketing Professional," Market Leader, Issue 1, Spring 1998.）

Brand identity is a visual feature to the products by critical components: names, logos, typefaces, and colors. An identity system is a powerful tool for the campus: It permits clear communication and a unified voice so that avoid the multiple interpretations make conflict with confusing audiences; It provides a way to immediately recognize the difference characteristic between university and enterprise; It strengthens a university’s reputation. (Dube et al.,w.v., Mcilvane,W.J.,&Green,G.(1992). An analysis of generalized identity matching-to-sample test procedures. Psychological Record,42,289-300.)(Kastak,D.A.&Schusterman,R.J.(1992).Comparative cognition in marine mammals: A clarification on match-on-sample tests, Marine Mammal Science, Vol 8, pp.414-417.)

Brand identity has strong contact to the high credibility. It helps the products to express to the students and recognize what kind of brand positioning the target market it is. It assures and establishes an loyal connection between the service sector of university and students.（Brand Management: A Systems Approach For Brand Antecedents and Consequence，P.Selvaraj，Indian Streams Reserach Journ，Vol.2,Issue.I/Feb; 12pp.1-4）

2.3.4 Brand image

Should be involve the university reputation http://www.joe.org/joe/2010december/a9.php; http://www.theknowledgepartnership.com/uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Reputation-Management-for-Education-2009.pdf

Brand image is the beliefs held for the specific brand. Brand image is formed all of relevant sources to better impress in consumers’ mind. Positive brand image is the way of exceeding impression the customers’ needs. Generally, the positive brand image has main elements of unique logo reflection organization’s image and the key values supported. An image is the based on the brand perceptions of associations that the consumers have been formed about the brand. （Brand Management: A Systems Approach For Brand Antecedents and Consequence，P.Selvaraj，Indian Streams Reserach Journ，Vol.2,Issue.I/Feb; 12pp.1-4）

Consumers are based on these associations which could develop the brands variety, brand images can increase the competence of branding communications, such as advertising, packaging, or other promotional tactics.（Randall, G., Branding, edited by Norman Hart, Kogan Page, London, 1997.；Brand Management: A Systems Approach For Brand Antecedents and Consequence，P.Selvaraj，Indian Streams Reserach Journ，Vol.2,Issue.I/Feb; 12pp.1-4）

（Doyle, P., "Brand Equity and the Marketing Professional," Market Leader, Issue 1, Spring 1998.）

(Katie Abrams，Courtney Meyers，Tracy Irani，Lauri Baker；Branding the Land Grant University: Stakeholders' Awareness and Perceptions of the Tripartite Mission，Extension Journal, Inc. ISSN 1077-5315.)

Moreover, the brand image plays a important role in university to the sector as a whole (King, D. (1993). Facing the image deficit. Journal of Extension, 31(3) Article 3TP1. Available at:http://www.joe.org/joe/1993fall/tp1.php and Brown, T. J., Dacin, P. A., Pratt, M. G., & Whetten, D. A. (2006). Identity, intended image, construed image, and reputation: An interdisciplinary framework and suggested terminology. Academy of Marketing Science Journal, 34(2), 99-106.). Paramewaran and Glowacka (1995 Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. and Berry, L. (2004), "SERVQUAL: a multiple-item scale for measuring customer expectations of service quality", Journal of Retailing, Vol. 64 No. 1,pp. 5-6.) suggest in their study of university image that need to develop or maintain a distinct image to create a competitive advantage in the increasingly competitive higher education market. This image will impact the volume of recruitment students, so establishing these images to increase the student’s application willingness to that institution. (Ivy, 2001 Ivy, J. (2001), "Higher education institution image: a correspondence analysis approach", The International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 15 No. 6, pp. 276-82.). Building a strong university image means focus on a target students to service, teaching in the certain way or target geography. (Oplatka, I. (2002), "Implicit contradictions in public messages of ‘low-stratified’ HE institutions: the case of Israeli teacher training colleges", The International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 16 No. 5, pp. 248-56.). （David Roberts，2009，Reputation Management for Education，The Knowledge Partnership，www.theknoeledgepartnership.com）

2.4 Branding

Hankinson (2004) suggest that the branding theory is the roots of the product marketing, which always applied in the specialized areas, such as education.（Hankinson, G. (2004), "Relational network brands: towards a conceptual model of place brands", Journal of Vacation Marketing, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 109-21.）The process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumers' mind, mainly through advertising activity with a consistent theme. Branding is a technique to build a sustainable, differential advantage by playing on the nature of human beings. (O’Malley, 1991). Once consumers become accustomed to a certain brand, they do not readily accept substitutes (Ginden, 1993).

Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/branding.html#ixzz2LMZKOwSP

The research on higher education branding is an exploratory and strategic perspective (Hemsley-Brown and Oplatka, 2006).Therefore, the literature on branding focus on external promotional strategies to resolve the organizational products and services identities how to managed, defined, and measured (van Rekom and van Riel 2000; van Riel and Balmer 1997). http://203.217.177.120/portal/images/utama/doc/artikel/2012/02-29/defining%20the%20essense%20of%20a%20university.pdf

Branding efforts have typically focused on developing competitive brand image and reputation.( Building a University Brand from Within: A Comparison of Coaches' Perspectives of Internal Branding, Kimberly M. Judson, Linda Gorchels & Timothy W. Aurand, pages 97-114, Volume 16, Issue 1, 2006) (Hemsley-Brown and Goonawardana, 2007).( Chris Chapleo, What defines "successful"

university brands?, International Journal of Public Sector Management ,Vol. 23 No. 2, 2010 ,pp. 169-183)

2.4.1 Higher Education as A Service Sector Business

There was some the notions that suggest the students regard as consumers. These reviews could illustrate explicit conception of the marketisation of Higher education, which emphasize that Higher Education was constantly being regarded as a business. However, opponents that the education regard as the business, market forces in education believe that the business world have moral contradictions with the values of education; so, they suggest the educationalists of institution should be against any form of marketing.

Later, higher education was not regard as a product, but as a service, and their marketing was different between service marketing and products marketing. (Nicholls et al., 1995). For example, Mazzarol (1998) focused importance of relationships with students on the nature of services, and that education marketing is "student- based" orientation.

Business sector marketing theory, some of the earlier conceptions focused on "product marketing" for instance, Kotler and Fox’s (1985) definition statement that students were the "product", while Levitt (1980) also regard a university’s offerings as products (cited by Binsardi and Ekwulugo, 2003). Later , the definition of higher education marketing were start to conclude the services marketing definition in the1990s, for example Mazzarol (1998) highlighted the key characteristics based on the nature of the services that provide of services marketing by business management theory developed and well-established. (e.g. Zeithaml et al., 1985; Parasuraman et al., 2004).

The recognition that Higher Education was one of the service industries to develop in the country, which could give a chance to increase the economy by providing the talent person into the company and then to attract more overseas students to interactive different culture and brings new study environments with the home students together.

2.4.2 Higher Education Branding

http://ec.europa.eu/education/programmes/mundus/doc/acareport.pdf

http://marketing.conference-services.net/resources/327/2342/pdf/AM2011_0339.pdf

Higher education branding is that the higher education workers (university administrators) aim to promote the university brand value and recognize the university brand’s behavior, they are based on the thought of the higher education market to make the school branding promotion plan, which could create, communicate and deliver the brand value to the customer (consumption of Higher Education products) through systematic management process.( Felix Maringe&Paul Gibbs ,Marketing Higher Education: Theory and Practice,open university press,Buckingham,2009)

Higher education branding is the dynamic model to developing the overall of the university, namely education consumer value as the guidance, the resource integration as the basis, the independent innovation as driving force. This determined the university brand building long-term decisions by the purpose of the non-profit, products integrity, and the complexity of higher school brand management. (Wendy W. Y. Chan, International Cooperation in Higher Education: Theory and Practice, Journal of Studies in International Education March 2004 vol. 8 no. 1 32-55) The basic process of University branding include the brand positioning, brand image design, education system arrangement, the brand image communication, brand management, brand extension (strengthen).(Duncan,J.G., Marketing of Higher Education: Problems and Issues in Theory and Practice, Higher Education Quarterly,Volume 43, Issue 2, pages 175–188, 1989.)

Branding, which is meant to cause differentiation features and protect the organizations’ unique expressed (Antorini and Schultz 2005). For example, the universities aim to maintain or improve themselves as ‘‘the best’’, ‘‘world-class’’, ‘‘leading’’etc. (Belanger et al. 2002).( Building a University Brand from Within: A Comparison of Coaches' Perspectives of Internal Branding, Kimberly M. Judson, Linda Gorchels & Timothy W. Aurand, pages 97-114, Volume 16, Issue 1, 2006)

2.4.3 Higher Education Branding Strategy http://marketing.conference-services.net/resources/327/2342/pdf/AM2011_0339.pdf

With the consumers’ needs become more and more variety and different, organization needs to connect the corporate strategies and marketing strategies to address different consumer segments in the competitive education environment. (White and Griffith,1997). Targeting the customer could be addressed by various links to corporate and marketing strategies. (Brendan J.Gray, Kim Shyan Fam & Violeta A. Llanes, Branding universities in Asian markets, Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol.12 No.2 2003,pp.108-120)

（Chris Chapleo, (2010),"What defines "successful" university brands?", International Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. 23 Iss: 2 pp. 169 – 183）

The branding literature has identified a number of branding strategies, but this paper focuses on just two important strategies: In doing so, universities have used their mainly brand factors to overcome foreigner students' little know about these when they choose university all over the world, enabling them to attract more foreigner students to study in China and deepen the promotional and positioning strategies in the University Branding.

http://marketing.conference-services.net/resources/327/2342/pdf/AM2011_0339.pdf

Apparently, position statements should be deeply considered in the University Branding. If the Universities want to develop brands, they should have effective brand strategies. Firstly, the Universities need to understand the key education requirements of foreigner students and the core of the perceived value and increase elements of their offerings’ programm.（Alreck,P.L. and Settle, R.B.(1999),"Strategies for building brand preference". Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol.8 No.2,pp.30-144）

Bulotaite (2003) suggests that when someone mentions the name of a university it will immediately evoke "associations, emotions, images and faces" and that the role of university branding is to build, manage and develop these impressions. ( Chris Chapleo, What defines "successful" university brands?, International Journal of Public Sector Management ,Vol. 23 No. 2, 2010 ,pp. 169-183)

Some studies suggest that there are the best promotional and poisoning strategies based on the school’s identity (image), curriculum arrangement (quality of teaching-learning resources). In order to develop an effective branding strategy to achieve their target consumers, education marketers also need to find out the effective promotional intermediary/media and communication channels.(Brendan J.Gray, Kim Shyan Fam & Violeta A. Llanes, Branding universities in Asian markets, Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol.12 No.2 2003,pp.108-120)

Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/brand-strategy.html#ixzz2LMnd0Vw2

2.4.4 The framework of the branding to attract the international students (需要改)

International context

Studies of international marketing focusing on students who sought higher education

outside their home country, has been a key topic for empirical research (Mazzarol, 1998;

Binsardi and Ekwulugo, 2003; Gray et al., 2003) and theoretical papers (Nicholls et al.,

1995; Mazzarol and Hosie, 1996; Mazzarol and Soutar, 1999; Czarniawska and Genell,

2002). Much of the interest in research in marketing of HE has been stimulated by

increasing competition for overseas students, for example, Gomes and Murphy’s (2003)

study of potential HE students’ use of the internet to facilitate information searching

and decision making. Theoretical papers identified for this review, focused on

advertising and access to information in UK markets (Nicholls et al., 1995; George,

2000), gaining competitive advantage (Mazzarol and Soutar, 1999; Czarniawska and

Genell, 2002) institutional and sector image (George, 2000; Oplatka, 2002) and market

differentiation through segmentation and market positioning (Mazzarol and Hosie,

1996; Czarniawska and Genell, 2002).

Demand-side issues

On the demand-side, a number of papers have focused on the choice factors of the

student-consumer (Baldwin and James, 2000; Umashankar, 2001; Pugsley and Coffey,

2002; Binsardi and Ekwulugo, 2003) and research seeking to identify key factors in the

choice of higher education has been conducted by researchers based in Australia (e.g.

Kemp and Madden, 1998; Soutar and Turner, 2002) and the UK (e.g. Ball et al., 2002),

with some research on students choice in international markets (e.g. Gomes and

Murphy, 2003). The subject of the demand-side of HE markets including choice factors,

however, justifies a separate study, and this body of research is mentioned here

because these studies overlap the period of this review, and undoubtedly had an impact

on studies of supply-side marketing.

Brand Marketing

The so-called brand strategy is a kind of the enterprise management strategy that company will use their brand as the core competitiveness, in order to get the difference profits and value (Aaker D.A., 1996).

Brand management

Brand management came from the Brand Strategy; it's a way Strategic decision and strategy implementation activity service the brand by considering the consumers. The purpose of brand management is control the brand well by the management (Sumaira S. & Tehseen S., 2011).

There are two sides of brand management, for consumers, brand management is managing experience of consumers by control all the aspects, like advertisement, marketing and service etc. For the company, brand management included Brand goal, brand positioning and brand communication etc (Sumaira S. & Tehseen S., 2011).