This study explores the challenges of university branding and the qualities that make university branding different from commercial branding in terms of cultural issues, branding concepts and frameworks, and brands architecture. The literature about branding in the university sector is described and viewed in the context of exploratory interviews with 55 university managers. The results present the differences between university and commercial brandings as well as culture, brand concepts, and brand architecture. The study was conducted in U.K. universities, but similar issues in many other countries mean that the results are comparable internationally. Overall, the findings presented in this research offer a valuable contribution to our understanding of the complexities of higher education branding.

(2017). Contemporary thought in higher education marketing. Journal of Marketing for Higher Education: Vol. 27, Contemporary Thought in Higher Education Marketing, pp. 159-161.

Social alliance is defined as the collaboration between for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Building on the insights derived from the resource-based theory, we develop a conceptual framework to explain how socially entrepreneurial nonprofit organizations (SENPOs) can improve their social alliance performance by adopting strategic alliance management routines. We test our framework using the data collected from 203 UK-based SENPOs in the context of cause-related marketing campaign-derived social alliances. Our results confirm a positive relationship between social alliance management routines and social alliance performance. We also find that relational mechanisms, such as mutual trust, relational embeddedness, and relational commitment, mediate the relationship between social alliance management routines and social alliance performance. Moreover, our findings suggest that different types of social alliance motivation can influence the impact of social alliance management routines on different types of the relational mechanisms. In general, we demonstrate that SENPOs can benefit from adopting social alliance management routines and, in addition, highlight how and when the social alliance management routines–social alliance performance relationship might be shaped. Our study offers important academic and managerial implications, and points out future research directions.

“Brand” is a term relating to organizational activities designed to synthesize and manage various complementary elements, such as visual identity, online presence, and reputation, in order to create a tangible sense of value to which people can make emotional attachments. “Higher education” refers to universities and other similar organizations that offer qualifications at degree level and above, and it represents the upper-most level of formal education in most countries. “Students” in this context are individuals attending university to study degree-level qualifications at bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate levels.

The particular purpose of this study was to examine and explore the factors necessary within nonprofit organizations (NPOs) for successful branding, and challenges in their implementation. The approach was an appropriate inductive qualitative one, conducted through depth interviews with opinion formers. Although there has been some research into the variables necessary to successfully build brands, only limited work considers anything other than commercial branding contexts. The originality is that through this work both theory and practice of branding in NPOs will be better informed so that structures to support branding can be better managed. Factors considered important to branding were identified, particularly leadership, employee understanding and clear vision. It was interesting that respondents generally agreed that limited marketing budgets were not necessarily a major problem. The research also identified variables that contribute to a conceptual model of nonprofit brand management, experiential and emotional branding in particular being notable as offering possible platforms for differentiation. The work is exploratory in nature and therefore informs understanding of brand management in a nonprofit context and forms a basis for wider empirical testing.