Bo Liu, Zhichao Liu, Chen Yang
Private colleges participate in the fierce competition in the field of education. As a major asset, the brand is the core competitiveness of private colleges. Strengthening the brand construction can promote the sustainable development of private colleges. At present, the branding of private colleges in China is facing a great challenge. Especially under the influence of the major policy of promoting the conversion of independent colleges, for schools set up independently from their parent schools as private colleges, they face the loss of the brand aura of well-known universities, and face great challenges in sustainable development and enrollment, which are the contradictory points and blank spots in Chinese higher education at present. More importantly, as clients of private colleges, students are experiencers and beneficiaries of the school brand. The brand construction effect of private colleges can reflect real situations more objectively and scientifically through the feedback of students. From the perspective of students’ experience and based on customer experience theory proposed by Schmitt, we selected Guangzhou City University of Technology as an object for case study. A questionnaire survey was conducted among 250 students at the school around the five dimensions of the school brand experience, and we received 241 valid questionnaires and analyzed the data submitted by the students. The aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of the school’s branding from the perspective of the perception of the students’ experience and to propose a path for the branding of private colleges. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
Guangzhou City University of Technology, No. 1 Xuefu Road, Huadu District, Guangdong, Guangzhou, China; University of San Carlos, P. del Rosario Street, Cebu City, 6000, Philippines; South China University of Technology, No. 381 Wushan Road, Tianhe District, Guangdong, Guangzhou, China
