Current paradigm of University in Korea falls short of meeting the demands of this digital era, and properly handling challenges and taking opportunities of new media. Students are changing into learners, professor-centered colleges into learner-cente...
Current paradigm of University in Korea falls short of meeting the demands of this digital era, and properly handling challenges and taking opportunities of new media. Students are changing into learners, professor-centered colleges into learner-centered, education into active learning, and students into lifetime members of learning community, and all these phenomena imply that Universitys are facing with an enormous change.
According to the estimate of population in the future released by the Korea National Statistical Office, the number of students is forecast to decrease to 476,000, 73% of University quorum in 2030, which shows that recruitment of students will become harder as time goes by. This indicates that management ability of University is emerging as priority, and differentiation among Universitys is being realized. To attract education consumers, there is an urgent need for advertising to improve the image of a University and make it different from others, and accordingly, investment in advertising has shown a sharp increase, along with accelerating competition among Universitys. In addition, the education sector cannot reject fierce market competition any more, with the capitalization and conservative trends prevalent worldwide.
Just as the deficiency of effective demands made CEOs develop customer-oriented marketing mindsets in corporate marketing history, Universitys have started active promotion activities for education consumers now. For strategic University management, it is critical more than anything to analyze the characteristics of environmental change accurately and develop a customer-oriented strategy to meet demands of the environment, in particular, needs and demands of education consumers, in a positive manner. As far as the application of University marketing principles is concerned, there is a difference from corporate marketing at least, although it is not to develop a new set of marketing principles. Non-profitable organizations are related with multiple interested parties, and the practice of marketing programs should be related with potential students in the future, current students, parents, alumni, professors, school staff, and government agencies.
Keeping pace with macro-changes in education environment, the Korean government has made its University education policies consistent, moving toward differentiation, specialization, and deregulation. Namely, University education policies aim to develop diversified and specialized University models so as to educate students to have qualities and abilities which individual areas of our society are looking for and help Universitys control the quorum and academic affairs by themselves, allowing the principles of market competition to work for University management in a wider perspective. Examples include ongoing-recruitment throughout the year, guarantee on the right to select a University through the activation of multiple applications, differentiated financial support projects in accordance with various University evaluation systems, autonomous gradual creation, abolition, increase of quorum, and reduction of departments and divisions within the context of educational conditions. These phenomena mean that, closing the quantitative growth-led era of the past, Universitys in Korea have entered the age in which they must make a positive effort to raise the quality of education services, paying attention to students as the biggest consumers of University education. A wide range of efforts to strengthen competitiveness of Universitys should be made in order to address various changes of education environment. One of such efforts is to make an approach to University education service from a marketing perspective and conduct studies on the improvement of the quality of University education services.
It is social reputation and image of a University that education consumers consider most important as a criterion for the selection of a Universitys. This administrative reform can improve reputation and image of a University and become an important concept of creative strategy in advertising.
The purpose of this study lies in improving changing preference of Universitys, by redefining creative types and analyzing related cases on the basis of brand image, focusing on newspaper advertisements of Universitys located in the Korea’s capital area, and carrying out verification analysis on communication effects of various education consumers, in order to enhance competitiveness of creative strategy of University advertisements.
First, what kinds of theories should be presented for the progress of Universitys, and what are the characteristics of individual creative cases of college advertising· Second, for University advertising, what creative types are being used mainly, and what is the ratio by type· Third, what is the effect of University advertising in terms of communication by creative type·
To solve these questions, literature and verification analyses were conducted in this study, with the following findings:
First, a model for the progress of University was developed as a result of literature analysis on corporate brand theories fit for University environment, considering that a variety of creative strategies should be prepared by increasing the value of University brand assets, through voluntary efforts for University advancement rather than simply depending on advertising, along with the effect of advertising communication to improve image of a University.
Second, all of the newspaper advertisements of Universitys located in the Korea’s capital area for the recent one year were classified by redefined creative type in terms of form and content, and University advertising cases were analyzed. This is of great significance in that the study prepared a framework based on organized creative types of University advertising in which investment is growing due to the recognized need for it, but thoughtless implementation of advertising gets in the way of generating favorable communication effects.
Third, form and content of advertising creative were categorized into three and five types, respectively, to examine recognition of advertisement through creative manipulation, and the verification analysis on the change of University preference by favorable impression of advertising revealed that creative types of University advertising had an effect on University preference, which proved the importance of University advertising.
Original role and values of Universitys must be preserved. Amid changes and challenges, only unified ‘effort’ to understand important ‘tradition’ of the past, ‘challenges’ of the present, and ‘possibility’ of the future will be able to help Universitys develop themselves in this era of change.