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The competition among higher education institutions to attract and retain prospective students is constantly getting fiercer. Therefore, it is important to investigate the factors that affect student satisfaction, student loyalty, and perceived image of a university. This study aims to identify and compare the influence of social environment and teaching excellence provided to students on institutions' university image, student satisfaction, and student loyalty. The data were collected from 829 undergraduate students who were studying at 15 universities, five public and ten private, in Istanbul. The data were analyzed by Structural Equation Modeling. The hypotheses were tested by using path analysis in AMOS and Independent Sample t-Test in SPSS. The results provide evidence that both social environment and teaching excellence have a direct significant influence on the image of a university and student satisfaction, together with an indirect influence on student loyalty through university image and student satisfaction. Some suggestions for higher education institutions are made based on the differences between coefficients among variables.

Besides official social pages of organizations, the anonymous online consumer communities are emerging phenomena. Participating these communities may affect the relationship between consumers and brands. Focusing on the higher education context, where consumers and brands have strong relationship, this work examines the impact of participating "Confessions pages"- the anonymous community on the brand relationship outcomes. Quantitative data were collected from 480 university students in Ho Chi Minh city who have followed Confessions pages. Findings indicate that online interaction propensity in university confessions page and attitude toward confessions page have no relationship with brand relational outcomes while higher education involvement has significant impact on satisfaction and image. The research explores the effect of anonymous online communities on brand and provide suggestions for universities to deal with this emerging phenomenon.

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.

Being a “window on the world”, the official website of an educational institution is among the most important means of promoting its activities, thus increasing its competitive advantage in the market for educational services. Providing a framework for efficient marketing, the functioning of the official website of a higher educational establishment represents a format of public relations, the outcomes of which depend heavily upon numerous factors. Presenting unbiased assessment of a university’s image formalised in terms of officially approved procedures is crucial for winning a respective market share. The Webometrics Ranking of World Universities (also known as Ranking Web of Universities) represents validated data that must not be overlooked by both website administrators and those interested in evaluating a university’s image. Though taken with a great deal of scepticism by some universities, webometrics ranking nevertheless can make the difference when it goes about sprucing up a university’s image and successful appealing to its target audience. The research work considers the issue of representing global rankings of educational institutions on their official websites as an element of marketing policies devised with the view of gaining a competitive advantage in the global educational space. It is highlighted that university ranks are based on applying diverse criteria and indicators as well as measuring respective values. Criticised are dishonest practices of providing false information aimed at increasing ranks of some educational establishments. The measuring indicators (availability, visibility, transparency (or openness), and excellence (or scientific character)) are analysed based on cybermetric data of research findings obtained by bibliometric methods. The authors elaborated a set of recommendations as for increasing the efficiency of university website functioning. The key point is to comprehensively select, verify, present and expand contents of a website. It is highlighted that information on the official website of a higher educational establishment should reflect the whole range of educational, scientific research and administrative activities carried out by the academic staff and students. Blended together, they represent the business reputation of the university, which includes its reputation, prestige, partnering relationships, business contacts etc. The authors share their experience in implementing the above measures at Vinnytsia Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi State Pedagogical University.

This study examines the role of student co-creation behavior in contributing to student satisfaction, perceived university image, and student positive word of mouth (WOM). Using a sample of 513 students from a Taiwanese university and conducting partial least squares structural equation modeling, the findings indicate that co-creating value is critical to student satisfaction, university image, and positive WOM. The results also show the effect of student satisfaction and university image on student positive WOM. This study confirms the pivotal role of student participation in co-creating value in enhancing satisfaction with the university experience, creating and sustaining a positive image, and building the credibility of the university. This research is particularly important to higher education institutions because it has practical implications for decision-makers, brand managers, and HE marketers who wish to improve understanding of the relationship between the university and students in the process of co-creating value and its outcomes.

The objective of this study is to investigate whether the quality of educational services and the university’s institutional image influence students’ overall satisfaction with their university experience as well as the possible consequences of these relationships on students’ loyalty. In particular, in today’s increasingly competitive higher education environment, such concepts have become of strategic concern in both public and private universities. To explain the complex system of relationships among these constructs, several hypotheses were formulated and tested through a structural equation model. Data were collected through a web questionnaire handed out to 14,870 students enrolled at the University of Pisa. The results provide valuable insight and show that teaching and lectures and teaching and course organization are the main determinants of students’ satisfaction and students’ loyalty among the more academic components of the educational service. Furthermore, the crucial role played by university image is worth noting, both for its direct and indirect effects on students’ satisfaction as well as on students’ loyalty and on teaching and lectures.

The paper reveals the sociological research findings reflecting the development problems and prospects of theRussianStateVocationalPedagogicalUniversity. A survey, conducted in March 2013, demonstrates positive dynamics of the university prestige, rank and popularity index compared to the year 2003. The academic staff tends to recognize the unique competitive advantages of the given university: status of the Russian higher school and leading vocational pedagogical institution; professional quality of human resources, variety of prestigious specializations, existence of the Educational Methodology Association, Dissertation Board, etc. Although the respondents point out some factors adversely affecting the university image and public opinion, the criticism helps to identify the problematic units and corresponding contradictions of the university development. The research outcomes can provide the background for strategic development programs ofRussianStateVocationalPedagogicalUniversityfor the nearest future; and help to promote the university brand as the leading, dynamic and competitive educational centre at the regional, federal and international levels.

The image of the corporations that form based on the perception of the corporation stakeholders could be different from the image which their managers’ thought to be ideal and desired to reach it.The first step of the raputation management is to know the corporation stakeholders’ perception about the instutional image. After that, the corporations can arrange the programs that is needed to reach the desired image.To create instutional image, the corporations must establish favorable relationship with corporation stakeholders and sustain this relationship. In this respect, if the corporations rule out the new target group which is called “ on-line stakeholders”, it can damage the reputation. In this study, the terms “instutional identity”, “instutional image”, “instutional reputation” and “digital image” were tried to present with literature review, then a measurement of image about the perception of Ondokuz Mayıs University on social media was performed, ÖZETKurumların, kurum paydaşlarının örgüt hakkındaki algılarına dayalı oluşan, sahip oldukları imaj ile yöneticilerinin ideal olarak düşündükleri ve ulaşmayı arzu ettikleri imaj farklı olabilir. Kurumsal itibar yönetiminin ilk adımı, kurum paydaşlarının kurum hakkındaki kurumsal imaj algısının bilinmesidir. Kurumlar daha sonra, arzu ettikleri imaja ulaşmak için neler yapılması gerektiğine ilişkin çalışmalar planlayabilir.Kurumların, kurumsal itibar oluşturulabilmesi için paydaşları ile olumlu ilişkiler kurması ve sürdürmesi esastır. Bu anlamda kurumların yeni hedef kitleleri “çevirimiçi paydaşların” göz ardı edilmesi itibara zarar verebilir. Bu çalışmada, öncelikle, “kurumsal kimlik”, “kurumsal imaj”, “kurumsal itibar” ve “dijital itibar” kavramları literatür taraması yapılarak ortaya konulmaya çalışılmış, daha sonra, Ondokuz Mayıs Üniversitesi’nin sosyal medyada algılanan imajı ile ilgili bir imaj ölçüm uygulaması yapılmıştır.Anahtar kelimeler: Kurumsal İmaj, Kurumsal İtibar, Dijital imaj, İmaj ölçümü, Üniversite İmajı