The researcher recommendations to UK HEIs are to embrace the experiential marketing perspective and focus more on the university experience of the current students other than on ways to attract new students through creating eye-catching curriculum. Once the University will establish a good base of delighted advocates graduate recruitment will become less expensive and more predictable thanks to the cost reductions realised through staff and students positive world of mouth.
研究者建议英国高校接受体验式营销的角度来看,更专注于大学的经验,目前大学生的方式来吸引新通过创建抢眼课程的学生除外。一旦大学将建立一个良好的基础高兴的倡导者毕业生招聘将变得更便宜和更可预见的感谢,降低成本,实现员工和学生积极的世界口碑。
It is vital that the university monitor not only the student experiences strictly related to class and relationship with professors ad tutors but also apparently less connected experiences such as the student welcome and in-troduction to the University the student experience with the admin is tration staff and University facilities and the student experience with the University accommodation.
至关重要的是,这所大学不仅监视学生经历严格相关类和教授广告导师的关系,但也明显少于连接如学生欢迎和引入到大学学生的经验与管理经验加以登记的工作人员和大学的设施和大学宿舍的学生的经验。
The University should also promote postgraduate students active par-ticipation in the extracurricular activities and social events since in general students which feel more part of the University are more likely to become advocates. The HEI should address the main obstacles to postgraduate student participation to extracurricular activities which are:
大学亦应推动研究生积极面值参与课外活动和社会活动,因为在一般的学生觉得大学的一部分,更有可能成为倡导者。喜应解决研究生参与课外活动的主要障碍:
1. The difficulty of reconciling the sports teams and societies responsibil-ities with only one year of permanence in the HEI
2. More time demanding studies
3. The main focus of leisure activities to undergraduates needs and re-quirements
4. Undergraduates’ control of most of the SUSU activities
5. Differences in ways of enjoying and spending free time among studentsfrom different countries
These could be partially overcame by promoting intramural sports leagues,which require less effort from the student side, and other positions in soci-eties whose duties are compatible to postgraduate schedule. Even though theuniversity population is mostly composed of undergraduate students somepositions within key societies might be left open exclusively to postgraduatestudents to guarantee more balance in the way the student extracurricularactivities are run. Attention to different cultures should be kept when or-ganising social events, this problem however would be partially resolved ifmore postgraduate students (which are mostly international) took part tothe events organisation.
Another important factor that the School of Management should con-sider is that, even though differences in demand are elevated, the studentscomposition should be as much as possible heterogeneous and not presentsignificant imbalances. These in fact might increase the difficulty of studentsintegration and create “students’ groups” which would make more difficultto gain student involvement.
Finally, the University should strive to exceed the students expectationsin particular at the first point of direct contact, during the welcome week.The opinions that the students forms at this stage will influence the overallstudent journey therefore the School of Management should give more atten-tion and importance to the welcome week and do not leave the organisationof the events to the faculty. The emotions elicited in the students shouldbe of a happy and friendly environment and each student should be giveninpidual recognition.
Further Research
Although this piece of research has brought to interesting insight on thestudent experience in a UK HEI and how this can be managed and improvedit is not conclusive. In particular the quantitative research stand was limitedby the short time-period available, which did not allow for collecting enoughdata to obtain a statistical sample which would have enabled to test thestatistical correlations more accurately.
In order to build a complete model the descriptive model should be testedthrough a rigorous statistical scrutiny. Furthermore the subject of the re-search was very specific, the School of Management postgraduate students,in order for the results to be extended to other realities situations in otherschools within UK HEI should be considered.
For the actual implementation of experience marketing within the Uni-versity issues of organisational structure and management, which have onlybeen pointed at in the literature review, should be explored further. A pre-requisite for this type of approach is an integrated structure where there iscommunication and cooperation between different functions professors andadministrative staff and bodies i.e. University, Faculties and Schools.