دانش آموزان به عنوان مشتریان در آموزش عالی
Abstract
1- Introduction
2- Market and customer orientation
3- Marketing in higher education
4- Students as customers
5- Recommendation
6- Conclusions
References
Abstract
Even though marketing in higher education is well established there is a continued (controversial and at times emotional) debate about who the customer is with many still unaccepting that students should be viewed as a customer in higher education. The paper examines this debate using the framework of market orientation, customer orientation and service and relationship marketing. The paper includes recommendations about ways to resolve the dispute and concludes that students must be considered customers in the development of marketing strategy.
Introduction
Drucker (1954) indicated the only reason a company exists is to satisfy customers, adding that marketing is "the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer's point of view” (p. 39). Market-oriented firms would agree. Kotler (1977) described a market-driven orientation as focused on satisfying customer needs. Marketing in higher education is well established and it would reason that this means that there is a customer focus. However there is a continued debate over who the customer is; there is not universal agreement that the student is a customer in higher education. In fact the question is quite controversial and at times emotional. If you ask faculty and university staff this question you might get responses ranging from, “students are NOT customers by any definition of the word. The sooner institutions of higher learning disregard a "customer service" model the better” (coming from faculty), to students should have an excellent customer experience. Students however would most likely view themselves as customers. The controversy may be based in the view of what being a customer means and a seeming contradiction between academic integrity and providing high quality customer service. If students are not viewed as customers this could indicate a lack of customer orientation and does have implications that should be explored. The perception that students are not customers is important since “how the consumer of the service is defined partly determines the view the university takes of the consumer and thus the service they provide them” (Pitman, 2000, p. 166). So who the customer is matters. This paper examines the debate using the framework of market and customer orientation and services and relationship marketing, with the aim and objective to clarify the issue, of whether students are actually customers, to end the debate. The paper does this by exploring market and customer orientation, the use of marketing in higher education, discussion about students as customers and then provides a recommendation.